Guess what just happened to me?
Be prepared for major tl;dr. Just a warning.
Well, since about 9 PM here, there's been a severe thunderstorm watch for my county here in south Texas. No big deal, I've been through plenty of storms. Around 11 PM, tornado watches began to be announced in the surrounding counties, but not mine. I felt okay, maybe some rain to set the mood for some writing that I've been wanting to do.
Hell no.
Around 12:30 AM, it started to blow in. Rain started, but this felt different. It came way too fast, and it was starting to feel like a hurricane. I remembered those two little kittens outside, so I got my flashlight and headed out. The rain's pelting me pretty hard now as I look for them under the brush, and I find them under a little table we have for gardening. As I grab them up, a clap of lightning hits and they start mewling and freaking out. It's really windy outside, like... terrifyingly hard, and the rain's just pouring like a faucet, so I head for the door.
Turn-- Click. Turn--click. Turnturnturnclickclickclick.
It's not opening. I had just locked myself out in the worst storm in years.
Knowing I had no time, energy, or courage to search for the key we have outside (it's hidden in a very odd and hard-to-get-to place), I start to pound on the back door in the hope that my mom will hear me. The kittens are drenched and squealing, and I'm starting to hyperventilate. Lightning striking somewhere close, and I'm still pounding. My mom (who was sleeping upstairs) opens the door, and I rush in, drenched to the bone.
So I made the kittens a bed in a bin we had, heating pad and all, food, etc. after drying them off a bit. Our doors and a few windows are starting to leak a bit (Well, severely for the back door), so my mom starts tending to that. We go around to try and prepare our house, when suddenly we hear a BOOOOOMCRASHASDKFAHDKF and the entire house shook violently. First I thought our house was struck by lightning, but after a few minutes of searching, we looked outside.
A 40+ ft tall cottonwood tree had been uprooted and had fallen on our house.
We have (er-- had) three cottonwood trees in a row in our front yard, each about 10 feet apart and about the same size. The middle one had come crashing down onto our house, but thankfully the only part it hit was the stoop we have in front of our front door, just idly leaning there, threatening to fall over at any given second. It also crushed a little grill/smoker my mom and I had just bought about a week ago, and that I had assembled Monday. We only used it once to make kabobs Tuesday, and now it's a bent up mess.
The storm has passed almost entirely now. We went outside a few minutes ago while some people came by and checked to see if our power/cables lines had fallen (they hadn't, thank god). We went around the side, to find that a hackberry tree on the other side of our house had been almost entirely uprooted. The ground was about raised about four feet around the roots, and the tree was leaning on our neighbor's house. It had only dented the roof siding a teeny tiny bit, but a tree still fell on the house.
Waiting restlessly until my cat Clyde comes home from wherever he was hiding. He's smart enough to hide, though, so I think he's just waiting the storm off too elsewhere. Found, thank goodness. Our cable was shut off for a bit (now it's back on, obviously), but thankfully we never lost power. My mom's taking tomorrow off to help clean up and talk with the neighbor more about the tree leaning on his house.
TL;DR: Major storm hit, possible tornado, I got locked outside, house leaking, a huge tree fell on our stoop and almost crushed the house, another tree uprooted and almost destroyed the neighbor's house, and s**t's ******** up now.
