jumpin' on the bandwagon

Since everyone else in my family (except my sister, which I'll get to in a minute) wrote about tornado experiences, I'm jumpin' on the bandwagon and doing it myself.

My sister spent the entire afternoon, about 4 or 5 hours, in her basement with her crabby almost-2-year-old, her husband, 4 other adults, and 3 other crabby children. They were all at the house when the UW texting alert system had it's debut, alerting everyone to get shelter because here comes a tornado. From what I can gather, several tornados touched down in Laramie yesterday. Kristen's power went out but I was calling her constantly throughout the afternoon and so was her father-in-law, who was watching the weather service in Wisconsin, where he lives. And Kristen said the new texting alert systerm that UW put in place worked fabulously- updating with text messages every 5 minutes. Awesome!

Kristen drove around last night to see the damage and called my mom. Walmart was closed at the time of the tornado because of a power outage so no one was in the store at the time the tornado hit it. Her friends Debbie & Sean were working at Gem City Bone &Joint (right next to Walmart) at the time and there was a surgery going on at the time of the tornado and a window was sucked out of their van in the parking lot. They saw some uprooted trees, siding torn off motels and homes but no destroyed buildings. Another tornado was said to go right past the high school. Around the high school area, they saw sports equipment (hurdles, soccer goals, etc.) blown up against the fences but no other damage that they could see. Josh had heard the bus windows had all been blown out, so kids had to wait for their parents to come get them. As a teacher- what a nightmare. Trying to keep all those kids calm and not let them leave until their parents got there? And man- they spent 4 hours in the hallway doing the tornado drill. Yikes. We've never even practiced that drill at our school this year. Perhaps we should.

Watching www.wyoroad.info yesterday showed some scary pictures of the interstate right as you get to Laramie- there was a semi tipped over in the middle of the road, and then the strangest one I saw, a big huge BOAT that got blown off a semi. Scary stuff.

I'm glad all we had was rain yesterday. LOTS of rain though. On my way home last night, there was flooding all over the fields. Canals are flooded. The ditch that runs in front of my house is only about a foot from running over with water.

I see on my email right now that Kristen emailed overnight, so her power must be back.

Praise the Lord that everyone we know (including Annie's sister, Stacey and Brady and Parker, and my family and anyone else we all know!) is SAFE! What a freak storm to come through this area. Makes me glad my new house has a basement!!