But I'm a South Texas Girl!

Last night was the first meeting of our much anticipated bible study, Love and Respect. I was really looking forward to it, so about 15 till 8:00 I headed over to Tara's. I noticed as I drove there were lots of people standing outside their houses looking to the Northwest. I looked back and saw a huge wall cloud, but I had seen several similar ones before that never panned out to anything important so I really thought little of it. I made my way to Tara's and we had our little informational. Then it started to rain. Two of the girls decided to try to leave before it started hailing. Too late. The sky grew darker and the hail grew bigger. By the time it reached it's peak, the hail was tennis ball sized and we were in the hallway. Yes, folks, C-town was hit by a tornado yesterday while I was at bible study. I kept saying, "But I'm a South Texas girl, I don't know about tornadoes and I don't like them." The windows in the front of Tara's house started breaking and my heart started racing and we all started praying...in the hallway. More nervous laughter.

Here are some pictures of the damage at our house. Our bedroom window was broken and hail and water got into the room and in the corner of the carpet. Our fence is destroyed, and I lost pretty much all of my plants. We have one tree gone, and lots of branches broken. Dead birds and squirrels everywhere, but the worst are the ones that are just hurt and can't fly. Maggie came up while I was outside with a dead squirrel in her mouth...OMG it was SO GROSS!!! Our sky lights on the porch are broken and the paint has been scraped off of the house in places. Our roof will need to be replaced and we had no power until about 3:00 this afternoon. And in spite of all of this, we are just SO VERY THANKFUL no one is hurt seriously and that everything that happened is covered by insurance and very fixable. Praise, praise, praise!

Here are two links to some pictures from the storm. They are very cool, but I wouldn't be caught dead outside at this point in its progression!

News Channel 10
Times Record News

Enjoy, and if you are in the area in the next two days I've got a job (or five) for you!

The broken window in our bedroom :( after Richard boarded it up from outside.

My poor, poor aloe vera plants were beat up! I think they will bounce back, which is more than I can say for most of my other plants...what a bummer!

In the backyard...this is looking into our West neighbor's yard...privacy is no longer an option in our neighborhood! That's our tree limb broken.

One of the two skylights that both were broken out! I LOVE those skylights...but insurance is a God-send!

Looking into our East neighbors' yards. The neighbors just next to us were out of town, so we helped board up their broken window last night, too.

These pics are out of order, but this is the cloud McH saw while I was at bible study and he was home. It is HUGE, isn't it? Scary but very cool looking!

Aw, hail! Yep, I'm sure that was said many times last night among other things. Can you believe this was yesterday evening? It looks like the dead of winter! That is ALL hail (and rain, too)! Unreal, I tell you! It ranged in size from tennis ball to marble and did SO MUCH damage around town!

There's talk that we could have another similar storm tonight. Ugh. Pray that it misses us but that we get some rain...can I be that picky? I think God understands.