Wordful Wednesday: Texas Tornadoes

We were right in the middle of a huge tornado outbreak yesterday.  If you're anywhere near Texas you've probably heard about it by now.  We were very lucky.  One of the tornadoes hit our street, a mear 2 blocks away from us.  We took cover when the sirens went off.  We lost power.  Then, I saw debris floating down from high above the trees.  It was weird...there were branches and leaves floating down from the clouds...much higher than the trees.  Then, I heard the tornado.  I had never heard one before.  It was just a constant roar in the distance.  We never actually had strong wind.  I think it kind of just sucked the wind away from us.  When everything calmed down, the kids and I took a walk around the neighborhood.  I couldn't believe it came so close!

The first 6 pictures are of the houses at the end of our street.

This is behind the back fences of the adjoining neighborhood.  There are no mailboxes on this street.  This is just how the tornado dropped this debris!



This is the nursing home down the street.  It took a very hard hit, but luckily there were no major injuries. 



This is a street in our neighborhood...one street over from ours...



Same tree, different view...



A couple houses down, more trees uprooted.  There's actually a house under there!



Luckily, our house didn't receive any damage.  We have lots of debris in our yard though.  As we walked around the kids picked up photos that we found...



There is also insulation everywhere.  Lots of drippy pink insulation all over town!

And shingles!  They are all over the street, our yard, and even in the pool.  We also found a dead rat in the pool, but I thought I'd spare you the picture of that!



As awful as these pictures are, this was by far not the worst damage in the area. 

Other neighborhoods and areas were hit much harder.  Its estimated that there were about 12 tornadoes that touched down yesterday.  We were without power for 6 hours because a tree at the end of the street fell on a transformer.  With all the devastation around us, I feel lucky that we escaped with only lack of power.

Wordful Wednesday is hosted by Parenting by Dummies.