For the past few days, it’s been all over the news- thunderstorms are coming! These usually occur in the spring, but since we’ve had a bit of a heat wave lately (70 degrees yesterday!!), it mixed with the cold winter winds. This always spells trouble- trouble in the form of violent storms.
The storms were supposed to start yesterday, but it was barely sprinkling as I drove in to work. Later in the day, it was even sunny. By the evening, it just felt like a balmy spring night. This was why I didn’t bring my umbrella OR a heavy jacket in with me to my Medieval Lyrics class at UD.
Around 9pm, about 2/3 of the way through my class, our professor grew visibly agitated. Those who were sitting on my side of the room facing the windows could see why- the occasional flash of lightning had ceased to occur every 10 minutes or so and had instead began to flash every 5-10 seconds. The bolts were growing closer and increasing in intensity.
All of a sudden, our professor stopped and said, “Well, this has been fun, but apparently the storm has decided to move in, and I don’t want anyone getting hit by lightning or hail. So, that’s all for tonight.” With that, she quickly gathered her stuff and walked briskly from the room. Everyone else did the same, joking the whole time about how fun it isn’t to drive in the rain.
I looked out the window again, and saw a huge fork of lightning streak across the sky. It was just light enough that I could also see the rain. Or, I should say, torrent of rain. And it was literally going SIDEWAYS. Like it was all caught within a whirlwind.
And that’s when I heard the tornado sirens go off. And I thought, “I’m going to die.”
Well, I didn’t die, I even made it home in one piece. It turns out that something very similar, if not a tornado, touched down in Colleyville. For those of you who know where that is, its 15 miles west of UD and about 2 miles from our house, where my hair salon is.
Here’s a picture of some of the damage that occurred:
Since the storm was moving east, however, by the time the storm hit UD the tornado had already happened. In other words, Jesse, who was at home, had already experienced the storm by the time I heard the sirens. So when I immediately called him in a panic, he knew what I was talking about. Since it was a very narrow storm, only about 10 miles across, it had already stopped raining at home where Jesse was.
But where I was at UD, it was torrential. Just picture buckets of water going sideways, with lightning every 5 seconds and winds that sounded like a locomotive. They said the wind reached 88 miles an hour.
But true to what Jesse had said, 10 minutes later I was able to run to the car without barely even getting wet. Driving home was hazardous, only because there was so much water on the road that I couldn’t see the lane lines. I even went through a puddle that washed a wall of water over my sunroof and down the other side.
But I am safe. And grateful. Whew, Texas weather is exciting!
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nyx says
oh gosh! glad you are safe! yeah tornadoes are no fun at all….*shudder*
knotquiteawake says
having never been in that situation I can confidently say that it sounds like fun. We even had some ‘violent’ weather here in California too. It rained! Like pretty hard too, I even got kind of wet on the walk to my car! Crazy! I thought maybe i should pickup some sandbags or something just in case the drainage ditch crested but I couldn’t find any salvation arm stations handing out sandbags so I just sat tight and try to to weather the storm out.