tornado

Last weekend (06.07.09) we had a tornado. The kids and I were watching TV and the screen went to a weather alert with tornado warnings for a neighboring county. I double checked weather.com and let the kids continue playing. A couple of minutes later there was a tornado warning for our county. And then the tornado sirens started....

I sent the boys downstairs to Christopher and Nicholas' room to play and I ran upstairs to look out the windows. It was pretty gray and the wind started to pick up. By the time I got downstairs, it started to rain. I opened the front door to talk to the people across the street and they were pointing behind our house. They yelled across the street to go into the basement.

I took Lexie downstairs and we all headed into the laundry room (our laundry room is in the center of the basement and has no windows). We stayed in there for about 45 minutes and read books while we waited for the storm to pass. We could hear it get REALLY loud and then gradually die down. After the tornado warning had expired, we headed back upstairs.

It didn't look too bad outside. We had a tree branch down and golf ball sized hail everywhere. From later news reports we learned that the tornado touched down about a mile away and then traveled southeast towards Southlands (an outdoor shopping mall that we're frequently at). They had more extensive damage there- about five miles from the house.

This was our first big tornado in the four years that we've lived in the Denver area. And for the record, no, I did not take this picture.