Tornado Warning

Well, yesterday evening (and throughout the night), we were faced with severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings. It was the first time we had faced this inclement weather since moving here. Overall, it had been a very peaceful (and DRY!) summer. I'm glad that someone had warned me about the sirens they set off in the city to warn people about inclement weather (i.e. tornados). Last night, as we were getting ready to start our bedtime routine with Enrique, I heard an awful screeching sound. At the time, it was starting to get a bit cloudy, but it has been cloudy on and off all week. Suddenly, it occurred to me that it might be the warning sirens. Sure enough, we were right. We turned on the tv (yes, I know, not the smartest thing to do when inclement weather is about to strike, but we don't have any other method right now to find out what's going on--tsk tsk on us), and sure enough, all the channels had the meteorologists talking about the tornado warning. One channel's meteorologist was particularly entertaining. It's not like nothing exciting ever happens here--the news is full of homicides and other "exciting" news--but this was particularly striking. He had a very nervous enthusiasm as he pointed out the approaching storm on the doppler. Jose joked that this was the moment that the meteorologists all went on call.

As the bad weather approached, we took shelter in our basement (which is what all the experts told us to do). We watched as the countdown to the storm hitting our neighborhood went on..."it will hit the highlands in 10 minutes...7 minutes...5 minutes...2 minutes..." and then, the sky was completely black and all that we could hear was the falling rain. The storm itself lasted only minutes, and blew past us as quickly as it came. Thankfully, as we looked outside after the storm, everything seemed quiet and we couldn't see any signs of damage. The whole time, we didn't even lose power. We were very lucky.

I saw on the news this morning that some people were not so lucky. I believe that in the Louisville metro area, there were several tornados that touched down. A small amount of homes were damaged, some area businesses and churches were pretty damaged as well. I believe a few people had to be treated at the hospital for minor injuries, but thankfully, no deaths or major injuries have been reported. All in all, I think that it could have been much worse, and I'm thankful that it was not!

All the while, Enrique seemed unphased by what was going on. We brought down some of his favorite toys to entertain him with while we were in the basement. Ah, ignorance is bliss :-)