Twisted Weather

Saturday we spent the day at Hutchinson at the Salt City show.  We didn't end up winning anything big, but enjoyed seeing our friends.  The weather was a hot topic around the show.  We were expected to get some pretty wicked weather in our part of Kansas.  Our friend, Sandi, even had a little hand held weather radio, and had packed up everything and left as soon as they were done showing.

As we packed up, I wanted to go in and say good bye to everyone, but Dan insisted that we leave. My mom, who is a 911 dispatcher here at home, sent texts telling us to stay put, that weather was going to hit just as we were leaving town. Dan pulled the map up on his phone, determined he was pretty sure we would miss it and  stay  just ahead of it.

That is EXACTLY what we did. Literally staying just a minute ahead of a storm that caused some major damage.  Mom would send msgs like "golf ball sized hail in Arlington" as we could still see Arlington in our mirror. It was a massive dark wall that was chasing us, or so it felt like. I had had the boys gather up shirts and hoodies, just in case they needed to cover up their heads with something in if started hailing, but all we ran into was some rain.

Came home, unpacked.  Sandi texted me several times, making sure we had gotten home ok, and we chatted about the weather a bit. Went to bed, woke up, made coffee, turned on the news. Holy moly.  The town of Woodward, OK, an hour from us, had been hit. Death count this morning from there is 6 people, with 3 of those being children.  Wichita area had been hit too, and WHY OH WHY was the street they kept repeating on the news sounding so familiar to me?? Took me a little bit before I realized that was where Sandi and her family lived. Surely not, I kept thinking.

Turned on the computer, and tuned into the chatter on Facebook.  Sure enough. Its sad when you see damage from towns or places you know, but it is a whole new level of panic and sadness when its people you know and care about going through it.   They had gone to a shelter to ride out the storm, and had spent the night in a FEMA trailer.   Their house is a disaster, their rabbit barn was destroyed, but they are all ok, and Tyler only ended up only losing 3 bunnies.  The cages were all bent and smashed, and he found mommas with babies in the neighbors yard, so I am now pretty certain bunnies have guardian angels too!  If those bunnies could talk, I bet they would have some stories to tell.

Kansas weather isn't anything to mess around with.

Sometimes I forget that. =(