TORNADO!

We thought we were well out of tornado alley up here. Not so much. After finishing dinner last night, (a "30-minute" shepherd's pie) we were sitting at the table and it was raining outside and we start to hear a siren. Now, it's not unusual for us to hear sirens, we live on the corner of a pretty busy street and one that is a main artery to get around the neighborhood. I lightly said "that's just a regular siren, right?" It was not. It was a tornado siren, and just about that time, the rain started coming in sideways and the tree in front of the window was blowing like crazy. The Weather Channel said that there were reports of tornadoes all around us including one in a neighborhood directly west of us heading "due east." That was it, we decided to bunker down in the basement laundry room. Rose got the message and crawled on her belly to the safety of the closet and her bag of baseballs, and we tossed a terrified Lily into the bathroom. I checked the interweb to see what it looked like, and sure enough we had a big band of red mess heading right for us. We stepped outside and there was no need for the umbrella - even with it up we were getting soaked.

Now, there's a bit of "vintage charm" about the doorknob on the back door.... it sometimes falls off and, of course it picks this moment to express it's "charm." Matt fiddled with it and fiddled with it and we noticed that the slight water problem we have at our back door was starting to breech the threshold. Finally got the door shut and the doorknob came out again on the outside - DAMN! Soaking wet, we run down the stairs in the worst downpour i've ever been in, crashing thunder and lightning every second. There was only one other couple in the basement and they came down earlier, so were nice a dry. We sat down there for about 30 minutes until it stopped sounding like a gully wash and started sounding like a normal storm.

so that was exciting.

there are new pics at my flickr page, but not of the storm