Tornados Make for a Long Night

I'm sitting here at the keyboard trying to write and keep my eyes open. Last night was a LONG night - intense tornados went through this part of the midwest and I was up late monitoring the storms as they barreled through.

Our family GroupMe chat was constantly beeping as family members were checking on each other and sharing news as to who had a tornado nearby and needed to find shelter. Hawkeye Sarah was right in the path of a huge wedge tornado that was dumping baseball sized hail. 

She took this screenshot of it and posted it in our GroupMe - it was five miles from her home and the news posted a list of its projected path. It was on a path to go right over her neighborhood. A second tornado was developing nearby but that one was going south of her, not coming straight at her like this one was.

Her home has a cinderblock safe room in the basement so she, Todd, and the dogs sheltered there while the tornado passed over them. Surprisingly, she had no damage, at least not that she could see.

While I was worrying about my daughter, she was worrying about hers. Trinity is a student there at the University of Iowa and she also drives for Cambus, a bus service for students and faculty. She was driving her route as the sirens went off so she pulled the bus over in front of one of the dormitories, ushered her riders out, and got them into the building.

Trin took a moment to snap a photo of the bus parked outside and post it on GroupMe. My phone lit up as family members were telling her to get away from those windows and to get into the basement.

While sheltering in the basement, Trina filled out her daily bus report. 

At that point, I needed a little levity! 

Her bus was fine when she came out of shelter. As for the rest of Iowa City/Coralville, we will know more as soon as the sun is up. Reports are that there is a lot of damage in Coralville.

After the tornados passed through Hawkeye Sarah's town I began watching what was happening around here. Several lines of tornadic storms were approaching us and soon there were several in the area, all of which seemed to be on track to go around us.

However, they were right on track to hit Brookston where Leslie and Rick live. They put an addition on their home a few years ago with a tornado shelter underneath it, so they climbed down into it as the sirens began blowing and one of the tornados came at them.

It's not deep enough to sit or stand - they have to lie down in it. Their internet went out with the storm so Leslie lost contact with news sources for the tornado, but she could still text so she asked me to keep them posted and to let them know when it was past them and safe to come out.

It was very late when I got to bed and I am moving slowly this morning. I've heard that south of town there was a lot of damage and other dribs and drabs of information, but the good news is that I have not heard of any fatalities in our area.

Tomorrow I'll be back on track here - Lisa went riding on Hokey! But for now, I am heading back to snooze a little more. Here's hoping other news from across the Midwest is as good as it appears to be from here.

What a night. March went out like a lion!

For a look at other tornados we've experienced, click this link or do a search on the blog to pull up several entries about tornados.