Tornado

Yesterday evening, a tornado went through my neighborhood. I did not know there was a tornado warning issued at the time. I heard the thunder and the house got dark really fast. When I looked out the dining room window, rain was going horizontally in heavy sheets. It was so unbelievable, I called my son to come see. Had I known there was a tornado warning telling people to seek shelter below ground and away from windows, I wouldn't have done that. When we turned around, we saw tree branches flying across our living room windows. At this point I was SCARED but ran to get my camera to document it!

Then it ended in a matter of minutes. I think the whole storm lasted 5 minutes at most, or what seemed like 5 minutes.

When I wanted to call my other children to check on them, I realized they were probably still in their college classes. Our phone lines were dead. When I got my cell phone, my daughter had already left me a message saying she was waiting out the storm and her friend's parents were coming to pick them up. I felt a sense of relief knowing that. Had I known at the time that their campus was the worse hit area of Queens, I would've been worried beyond control. When I spoke with B, he was OK. I told him to meet up with his sister for a ride home since there was no way for me to get to them.

So many trees were down in my neighborhood that cars were driving up our one way street in the wrong direction just to get to a main thoroughfare. It started to get sunnier and so we ventured out to see what was going on. The sky was a greenish-yellow hue. We were supposed to go to a home schooling meeting later that evening but I called to say I wouldn't make it. I didn't know how awful it was outside of my neighborhood but the thought of driving later in the dark with trees on the ground was not something I wanted to do. Later on, I found out there were blackout in some areas and traffic signals around me were not working. So glad we stayed put. Gridlock was really awful.

There was an eerie silence outside, other than the sirens and alarms. People were out assessing the damage. It was surreal! The weird coloring of the air gave such an unreal aura. I never could've imagined so much damage in such a short period of time. It was nothing compared to television reports of the Midwest towns which are leveled by tornadoes. We live in brick houses which stand up better to the winds, I guess. But it was bad.

After driving today, I felt really sad thinking about all the trees which are now going to be cleared away. So many looked as if someone chewed off the top or twisted the branches off. When I came home from picking up A this afternoon because buses weren't stopping (she was too tired to walk home after doing it yesterday and walking most of the way this morning), I felt a bit depressed. The toppled trees will be killed. The snapped trees will be killed. The split trees will be killed.

One woman died on the Grand Central Parkway by Jewel Avenue. I thought of her as I drove by that area. A human life lost in this tornado. Amazingly, only one!

The branches impaled in our garage and in the sidewalks just tells you the force of the tornado. They could've killed pedestrians! Thank God they didn't.

At the end of the day, it wasn't so bad but I will definitely never forget it.