A Tornado Sized Scare

I have never in my life witnessed an actual tornado. I have seen tornado footage on television, documentaries, movies, and magazine's just like everyone else in the world has. I've heard tons of personal expierence stories from friends who have been in a tornado. I live in Lamar, MO and in the 21 years that I have lived here, I have never seen a tornado rip through here. With all this being said, I have never went to the tornado shelter in town. Yea, I've heard the sirens go off several times in my life, but I've just never felt like the weather was bad enough to get in my car and go take cover at the town shelter. I live in a two story apartment and we do not have a basement around here to go to, so my husband and I have just always stayed here even when the weather is bad and the sirens would go off. I do recall one time when my husband convinced me that I had to take all the pots and pans out from under the cabinet in the kitchen and get in the cabinet and hide. That did not go very well for me because our kitchen cabinets are really not that big. I got in that cabinet and almost got stuck and couldn't get out. My husband found this little prank to be very hilarious while I was stuck in the cabinet and freaking out. He finally helped me out and we laugh about it now. I never fell for that prank again. Anyway, things are different now because we have a 7 month old daughter. I could never let anything bad happen to my daughter. I finally got my first tornado scare this past Saturday. For those of you that live in the four state area, you know what I'm talking about. On Saturday night, I was just sitting on the couch doing my History homework, the news was on the televison right in front of me. A severe weather alert warning popped up on the screen for like the 5th time, but this time it said that there was a tornado spotted on the ground in Mindenmines, MO and that it was headed straight down highway 160 towards Lamar. The weather alert was advising for residents of Lamar to take cover immediately. My husband had just laid my daughter down to bed about a half hour ago and he was upstairs in our bedroom playing the XBox. I yelled up the stairs for him to come downstairs for a minute. He came downstairs and I explained to him what the weather alert just said because I was a little concerned for my daughters safety at this point. He walked out the back door to look up at the sky. It was calm outside right when he went out there and after standing out on the back porch for a minute or two the wind started to pick up. After about another minute the wind really started to roar. There isn't a whole lot of anything that concerns my husband, but at this point he turned to me and said, "Go upstairs and bring the baby down here, now." At this point, my nerves were starting to stand on edge and I immediately went to go do what he told me to do. I brought the baby downstairs and she was still sleeping on my shoulder. I got to the kitchen and saw my husband still out on the back porch with the door open. He was talking to the neighbor about the situation with the weather. Brian was explaining to him that there was a tornado headed straight for Lamar. Our neighbor must not have been watching the news, because he just thought there was a thunderstorm coming. I then stated to Brian that the sirens haven't even gone off yet and that we shouldn't freak out just yet about going somewhere for cover. Right as I ended that sentence, the sirens went off and it started to rain. My husband looked at me and said, "You have 10 seconds to get what you need and get in the car, give me the baby and hurry up!" I immediately did what he said and ran to get my jacket, something warm for the baby, the diaper bag, my purse, and a baby blanket. After I collected all those things I was out the door towards the car in exactly 10 seconds. My husband already had the car ready to go and the baby strapped into the car seat. I jumped in and buckled up. I then looked back at the baby and she had a really funny dazed and confused look on her face. I smiled at her and said, " we are gonna go bye- bye for a minute." She still just stared at me with the same confused look. Brian took off down the road and told me that we were going to his friends basement. By the time we got to his friends house, it was starting to hail nickle sized hail. I told Brian to cover the baby's head and get her inside as fast as he can. We ran inside his friends house and went down to the basement with the others that were there. The wind and the hail started roaring and coming down so hard that I really thought that this was it, my tornado expierence. Lucky, the storm finally died down and everyone came up from the basement and the weather man cancelled the tornado warning for our area for the night. Relieved, I asked Brian if we could go back home now. He said yes and we got in the car and went home. I put the baby back to bed and finished my History homework and went to bed myself. I'm just so glad that it wasn't a real tornado. That was the first time I was really scared that we were going to be hit by one. I think it might have just been my parental instincts to protect the baby, but I'm glad we went and took cover. I guess I will be taking the weather warnings a little more seriously from now on.