Vancouver is Twisted!

Here is a copy of a post in my personal blog called "Twist and Shout":

Okay, not so much shouting... but a heck of a lot of twisting!!!

Today started out pretty good. Ryan was staying home from work, sick. That part wasn't good but it was nice that he'd be around. Rori woke up doing great! She had been sick yesterday but she slept soundly for over 12 hours last night and I think that really helped her. I had a little headache, but other than that I felt great!

To give Ryan some quiet time to rest, Rori and I headed out to run errands. It was so nice and warm! We just wore sweatshirts and enjoyed our shopping. On the way back home, coming up from Portland, I saw some big, dark clouds over Vancouver. "Joy", I thought. Then I saw lightening - and a lot of it! Multiple strikes shooting straight down at the same time. Wow! If Ryan hadn't been sleeping, I would have called home to tell him because he loves a good lightening storm. I remember wishing I had my camera with me (as if I could have 1) taken a picture while driving, and 2) would have actually gotten a shot of the actual lightening strikes, lol).

Shortly after I got home, I saw that I had missed a call from my friend on my cell phone (Thanks for turning my ringer down without telling me, Honey!) so I called her back. "Oh, I was just calling to tell you about the tornados," she told me.

"WHAT?!?!? What tornados? Here???"

"Oh yeah!" She told me that we were under a tornado warning and that at least one had touched down, here in Vancouver! She saw that my car wasn't home and tried to call to let me know. Thankfully, I had been south instead of north, since that is where it had ended up going.

I should have turned the news on right then, I'm sure we had continual coverage seeing as how we NEVER get real tornados. We've had funnel clouds before, heck I've seen funnel clouds here... but we never get real, honest to goodness, categorized tornados. But by this time, my headache had turned into a migraine and I was in bad shape, and that was more important,so I just went to bed while Ryan watched Rori for me.

I finally got up about half an hour ago (my head still hurts but it's not as bad as before, thanks for asking ;) lol) and turned on the news. Sure enough, an F1 tornado touched down in Vancouver in at least 3 different locations. It's winds were 86-110 mph, the path was 2 miles long and 1/4 mile wide. Fortunately for us, it was all west and north of us. Unfortunately for those in those areas, thousands are out of power still because of it. :( There are a lot of home movies and pictures coming in, some are pretty impressive!

Acadia shared with us (maybe I'll have her post it in her blog too) that they were out at their lunch recess when the teachers started to yell at them to run inside. She said they were "herding" them and yelling, "Run, run, run!" She said she and her friends were thinking, "This must be serious, they NEVER tell us to run!" They were first guessing that their school was under "lock-down" but once inside, they were instructed to get on the ground with their heads on the floor and their hands over their heads, an exercise they've practiced before in "tornado drills", and they were told that there was a tornado in the area. She told me that a friend of hers was crying and I asked if she (Cadi) had been scared, she said yes. She said it kind of hurt to stay in that position, too. (I bet!) But she said that afterwards, the teachers talked to them about what had happened and assured them that the tornado had ended up being on the other side of town, but that they had needed to stay in that position just in case and kind of as another practice. I told her that since tornados are so unpredictable, it was really important for everyone to be careful because they can change directions and move so fast, you never know where they'll go next.

Fortunately, there have been no real injuries from the tornado but there has been a bit of damage. There was a boat house completely destroyed on Vancouver Lake, 90% the boats were destroyed too, it looks like. And there are lots of trees totally ripped out of the ground in the areas that were hit (several falling on cars or homes), as well as a lot of roofs stripped of their shingles, some with even the plywood torn off. (Mom, the pictures made me think of your house this weekend, the pictures from the air showed homes with large sections of just wood exposed and people were rushing to get tarps put over them before it got dark since we're expecting rain for the next few days still.) I don't envy them - especially since we JUST got our new roof put on!

Since no one got hurt, some of the stories that are coming out because of this are pretty entertaining. One man was working in some sort of construction, went to use the port-a-pot and as he was in it, the outhouse was lifted up and toppled over! Luckily, the guy had just been "finishing up" and was just "tossed" out the door before anything "unpleasant" got on him! (This guy headed home from work only to find a tree had fallen on his house! Double whammy, poor guy!) Other construction workers were digging a ditch when the tornado went right for them, they had to dive into the ditch they were digging to stay safe. One business put this on their billboard today, "Auntie Em It's a twister!" lol

So that was our excitment today! A tornado right here in Vancouver, WA!

Come on, Baby! Let's do the twist...


Acadia also posted a short blog about it, visit her blog to read it. I've posted other random posts in my blog (I try to post regularly.) in the last week too, some include pictures of the girls. :)