Thursday 5-23-24 Tornado, Hail and Rain & After Effect

 

No power and lots of damage

After the storm in front of the garage

Wednesday evening we had a tornado come through Temple/Belton and the surrounding areas. I was dancing when it hit and it took out the power. Larry heard the whirling sound of the wind. There was large hail hitting the windows, roof and everything in the it's path. There was also a lot of rain. Our neighbors went into the storm shelter in their new home. We just waited it out. It was very scary but no one was hurt. We have lots of downed and damaged trees but no house damage. We were lucky we didn't have any trees fall on the house or windows broken by the hail.

After the tornado everyone went outside to check the damage. A couple of the neighbors had generators so they ran them. Our Minnie was in storage so it wasn't damaged. One of our neighbors cars had an oak tree fall on it. The wife said that her husband didn't like the car anyways. The neighbors across the street from us were driving home and got caught in the tornado. They said that it was the scariest thing they ever experienced. Their car was being lifted off the ground. They pulled on the side of the road and waited it out.

 

A giant oak that was uprooted in the backyard

One of our neighbor's oak trees in our yard

Another oak down on the side of the house

 

 

 

 

One of the arms of an oak tree in the backyard

Another one of our oak trees fallen on the neighbor's fence

 

They have no idea when we will get power, there are over 70,000 people without power. We decided to go to the storage center to get the Minnie. While driving to the the storage center we saw fallen power lines, poles and transformers on the ground. The nearby gas stations didn't have power either. We were very grateful that the CEFCO next to our storage center had power. The storage center also had power so we could open the electric gate. We got the Minnie out of the unit and went to CEFCO to fill it with gas and get breakfast. While eating breakfast the weather forecast indicated there was a line of severe storms headed our direction so we took the Minnie back to storage, we didn't want the Minnie to be caught in a hail storm. Then we went home.

On the way home we saw how lucky we were, some homes we didn't have roofs. We saw a couple of vehicles that had totaled by the tornado. There were buildings that were totally destroyed and missing. The good news was we haven't heard that anyone was hurt.

Our neighbor behind us got his family and a chainsaw and started his clean up. He had a giant oak tree fall on his house. It looks like it only damaged the gutters. They spent the whole day removing the tree from the roof and pool. They also removed other oak trees in their backyard and off the fence. Without power there is nothing we can do but wait. 

At home one of our cell phones did not work at all and the other only worked enough for text messages and sometimes phone calls. Larry was able to hook up our Mobley hotspot to a battery and get it to work so we could get the internet. He ordered a chainsaw, it should be here tomorrow. After lunch it appeared the severe storms would miss us so we went back to the storage center to get the Minnie. While going to get the Minnie we saw Oncor working hard to set new power poles, raise the power lines and get power back. Unfortunately it's going to take a few days. We'll be ok because we have a generator in the Minnie.

When we got home Larry turned on the generator and strung an extension cord and plugged in our refrigerator. He also told our neighbors next to us they could plug in their freezer. I barbecued a frozen pizza on the grill for dinner.

After dinner Larry decided to put the two extension cords (one to our house and one to the neighbors) that were plugged into the Minnie on two different circuits. He plugged the extension cord for our house in the plug for the microwave in the Minnie, that way we wouldn't blow a breaker. He also plugged a meter into the extension cord so he could monitor how much current we were using. By doing this he was able to determine we could power quite a few more items. Using a multitude of extension cords we now have a lamp, television, Echo Show, fan, router, internet modem, charges for the computer / phones and a monitor. 

Larry also texted the neighbor letting him know he could feel free to power up more things.

We did end up with a couple of more storms coming through but only rain, no severe weather. 

I ended up playing the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Event. The event was Event: Spider Mini of 5 games. It took me 15 minutes and 13 seconds, which put me in 12th place in my group. I ended up doing 18,000 steps, which put me in 2nd place in my group.  

In the evening we relaxed in front of the television. We will start our clean up when we get power and the electric chainsaw. At some point we will get a crew in to trim and remove the trees. We already had a couple of tree trimming companies put their cards on our front door.