"The Tornado"

So... tonight Grandma Schwieder called to ask about the tornado in Jackson, Mississippi. We told her about the tornado warning sirens that went off most of the morning and part of the afternoon and about the violent thunder and wind storm we had but that was all. Well, after speaking with Grandma, a neighbor came by with some home made blueberry coffee cake to introduce herself and she started talking about "the tornado". It turns out that it came much closer to us then we had thought. She mentioned how she was quite nervous today and wanted to make sure we were okay. MiKell admitted that we didn't know enough to be nervous.

Anyway, I guess while MiKell was picking up Zach from preschool at about noon, the storm was heading across the reservoir which is quite close by here. She noticed that there were hardly any cars on the road but thought it was just because of the horizontal rain. Shows how much we know. We thought we were just experiencing a fierce thunder storm. Instead we were on the fringes of a tornado! What's really funny is that when it was at it's worst, I tried to get some pictures of it to put on my blog. It was really wild. But the pictures didn't really show anything. When Zach got home from school he was quite indignant because he had to sit in the hallway half of the day. He said it was so "boring". Later the storm turned and came back across the reservoir, and it did touch down in Clinton. Kyle came home from work about 2 PM because they wouldn't let them stay in the building, and it took him awhile to get home because he had to find a route where trees weren't across the roads. That is our exciting experience which we didn't even know we were experiencing! I do hope it is the closest I ever get to a tornado.

PS. At church Sunday (yesterday) the Bishop announced the volunteer efforts to help with clean up. The tornado touched down in three places. One man in Sunday School spoke of his car getting picked up out of the parking lot and thrown against the building where he worked. He was glad they were still in the building!