The Storm of June

Ahh, the boys are in bed (including Aaron), what a perfect opportunity to lie down and relax . . . can you hear the silence? What?! the tornado alarms? I was just about asleep!! The room is bright, I peak out the window only to find a few clouds. . . hum. . . oh the city tests the tornado alarms every Saturday. That must be it. Well, today isn’t Saturday, is it? No! Wonder what the news says, sure enough here comes a severe thunder storm.
Living in Omaha you can take these tornado sirens for granted. They go off for severe thunderstorms or tornados but Omaha is large, so that doesn’t mean you are going to get the brunt of the storm. SO. . . I head downstairs to wake Aaron and ask if he can hear the sirens. A dumb question, of course he heard the sirens. The boys woke up and we watched the news as the storm approached. The news was saying there was not a report of a tornado but there were straight lying winds of around 80-90 miles an hour with dime to quarter size hail. We watched out our front window as the winds started blowing, then the sky started to darken, the winds picked up, the power went out, and suddenly the tree outside our front window went horizontal.
“That isn’t a tornado?” and Aaron said “lets go! We are going downstairs, NOW!” So I shut the blinds much to Aaron’s disapproval and we headed downstairs. In the chaos I didn’t think to grab a flashlight. Brevin was scared because of the sudden rush to the basement, not to mention the noise caused by the hail. After a few minutes the hail stopped, the heavy rain became a drizzle, and winds calmed. We came out of our basement to assess the damage. With the sounds of the storm there had to be something. Looking out our front window things didn’t look too bad but as we got out of the house we found some pretty sad sites.
After touring the wreckage for about an hour Aaron went to find a chain saw chain for someone’s ancient chainsaw. He had no luck, but Brevin had a good father-son night out with dad. And Jace had some quality alone time with mom.
It is now 10:30 p.m. and here I sit waiting for food from Aaron. There is an estimated 125,000 customers without power in Omaha. (not estimated to be back on until at least tomorrow morning) I went to find food earlier and sat in the Taco Bell line for 30 minutes before deciding that it wasn’t worth waiting an additional 30 minutes to eat nasty Taco Bell food. I was going to eat a peanut butter sandwich. I passed a Wendy’s on the way home and saw the same story, a LONG line. Same thoughts went through my head. Now I am beginning to think that I am not waiting for food, I am going to bed. So I guess we will be “camping” tonight in our house with no electricity. Thank heavens for batteries, this lap top (thanks dad), and most importantly a safe stable home.