Tornado!

Tuesday evening while down in Indianapolis, I heard that there were tornados just north of us. I knew the building I was in was very safe should anything happen, but I did wonder about our drive home.

I was right to be concerned. I got a text message from Lisa who had been at our home with the dogs.

That "no confirmed touchdown" would change because there actually were two tornadoes, one of which was out by Hershey, the school where I teach.

 As I drove to work Wednesday, I noticed a debris field on the north side on 300, just a mile from Hershey.

 The debris stretched quite a ways through a field.

 I could tell a tornado had hit a metal barn and then thrown the pieces as it traveled north toward Buck Creek.

As I drove home from school that afternoon, I took pictures of the farm building that had sustained the damage.

 Not the best picture, but I was driving and had a car behind me.

This tornado was only a mile from my school. In 1996, a tornado actually hit my school, Yankee Ridge Elementary, and just missed our home by a quarter mile. That tornado wreaked havoc and killed one person. (We lived in Illinois at the time.)

This is a video of that tornado. After their school had been hit, my students took our drills seriously! It was very, very real to them.

Now, whenever we do a tornado drill at school, I reassure the kids that, while I don't think it will happen, that being hit by a tornado is possible.

This recent one so close to my school just confirms how possible that really is.