Storms Roaring Through

We didn't get much sleep last night due to all the storms roaring through here. Our NOAA radio kept going off, if seemed like every 30 minutes from midnight until 3 AM this morning. Ugh! I don't see how Doug got any sleep because he finally got out of bed around 4 AM. We got to laughing in the middle of night because he was picking on me about hitting him whenever the NOAA radio would go off. I just thought he was asleep. For one thing, I didn't want the alarm to wake up the children and secondly, I needed to know if a tornado was headed our way. When the alarm woke us up at 3:00, I heard the tornado siren going off outside. I jumped up so fast, grabbing clothes, turning on lights, I was about to get the children up when Doug announced that we don't even know where the tornado was spotted. By this time, he finally pressed the button to hear the alert. Once I heard in the Joppa, Arab areas I was breathing normal. By this time, Doug was giggling at me. I told him that I wouldn't be this way if I had a basement. He made some comment about seeing me running to the basement or something like that. I interrupted him and told him "no, I'd be asleep in the basement." LOL!

I knew around 3 AM the storms were pretty rough around here, the sky all lite up. When me and kids left this morning to head to school, I didn't realize just how bad the storm was until I got to look around at all the debris. When we got to school, there was not a soul around. At first, I thought maybe I forgot about a holiday or teacher conference day. I noticed one of the ladies that work at the school. I pulled up next to her vehicle and asked her what was going on. She said because of all the storms, school was delayed for an hour. Wow! I could have actually slept for another hour. Alright. So, I was just going to head back home, but Katie asked me if we absolutely had to go back. I asked her where she wanted to go. "Ahh, let's just ride around for a little bit" she suggested. "Where do you want to go?" I asked. "I know, let's go to Walmart. We've got time" she announced. I didn't know if we would have time or not, so all I could do was drive down streets. I noticed some debris, but nothing real big. That is until I passed the Catholic school. I noticed bigger limbs lying in the streets and sidewalks. A block further, a karate school's front glass got blown out. A man was walking down the sidewalk with a broom in his hand, headed to the karate school. It appeared to me the school's metal awning collapsed and busted the window. Glass was all over the sidewalk and in the parking areas. I tried to avoid the glass. That's when I noticed blue lights reflecting in a store's windows another block up the street from the red light, I was stopped at. I drove down and around to get a better view as to what was going on. There were too many people walking around and too many blue lights for a simple speeding ticket. That's when I saw it, a furniture store's glass windows were blown out onto the street. It must of been pretty bad because the police had to close the road off completely. This store has a fabric awning, but it was all mangled and glass was every where. The next block over, a big oak tree was split in half and it did some damage as well. You talk about trash, and signs mangled. We continued to drive around to see if there was anymore damage, but it seems that in this section (approximately 3 blocks) were the worst hit. I'm guessing straight line winds must have hit this area.

After all the sight seeing, we only had enough time to get a bite to eat at Chick-fil-a. Katie was bummed to find out that we had to get back to school.

We're expected to receive rain and possibly more storms today. We have a chance of rain every day this week til Saturday. We need the rain, but don't like the storm part very much.