Sunday morning we woke up to some decent storms. I was getting ready to go to ward council, planning for the rest of the family to join me later. However, the storms were getting pretty bad, so we made the decision for me not to go. And later that day, we decided to not go at all. It turns out to be a good thing, as the tornado siren went off, and everyone was sitting in the hallway, in skirts and shirts and ties, waiting for it to pass. They ended up passing sacrament, and then dismissing early. Later in the day, around 3 in the afternoon, the sirens went off again.
Again, we (minus hubby, who is not afraid of them sirens) went to hang out in our safety spot. I would have sworn at the time, that there were a few moments when I thought I heard almost a train sound, and then such a strange sort of quiet afterwards.
Come to find out, later that day, that there might have been a reason why. At least 4 individual tornadoes touched down during the course of the day. The largest being an F4.
That particular tornado killed 23 people near our area and jumped across the river into Columbus. It's path was almost 70 miles long!
And, to make it even scarier.... This is why maybe we thought we heard a noise! The green arrow points to our house. The red in the top left corner is the path of the tornado and the path of damage it created. The scale is at 0.6 of a mile. Which means that the tornado passed less than 1 mile from our home!!! Yikes!
We ended up loosing power for a few hours. But it could have been much worse! It was worse for many others. The Ashcrafts lost power for almost 2 days. And, unfortunately, we ended up in our safe place a few times, when the sirens went off a few times. (At hubby even joined us at least once)
Again, thankfully, we were personally unscathed. But there were many who weren't and several who lost their lives. We ended up being able to participate in the clean up efforts in the following weeks. It was really nice to be able to help out.
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