Thankful Thursday 6/19/08

• I went shopping with Dr. B. tonight, and when we came out of the shop, my car was not where I left it. It was in the middle of the street in front of the store.
  
  Apparently I either forgot to set the parking brake or didn't set it hard enough. Also, nobody ever told me that you're not supposed to leave a manual transmission car in neutral when you park it. It doesn't have a "park" gear like my van does. (DH normally drives that car, and I'm not very experienced at driving a stick shift.)
  
  The car rolled out of the parking space, turned just enough to avoid hitting another car, and then stopped in the middle of the street, with room for other cars to go around it.
  
  It didn't hit anything, though there were other cars and concrete pillars nearby. Really, it should have hit something because of where it was parked and the angle of the slope. There wasn't a scratch on anything except the tire marks on the curb at the side of the parking space, where the curb helped to turn it enough to avoid hitting the other cars nearby. And it stopped before it hit the building.
  
  We stood there and thanked God aloud in the parking lot.
  
  I highly doubt that I will ever forget to set the parking brake or to put the car in first gear when parking it again.
  

We're OK

A little while ago we had a sudden storm that was really intense. It started out with pouring down rain and very loud thunder and lightning, progressing to huge hailstones hammering the roof and intense winds. It lasted quite a bit longer than hailstorms usually do here.

I thought, "Wow, it almost sounds like that wind is trying to rip off the roof." When the storm got intense and the power started flockering, I made sure we were all downstairs and encouraged the kids to come and look at the hail from a safe distance.

A while later, a friend called to ask if we were okay. It turns out that it was quite possibly a tornado (it looks like it, but apparently National Weather Service has to confirm that, which will take a day or so).*

The worst of it was at one of the stores we often shop at, about 5 minutes away. There were cars and a semi trailer flipped over, roofs ripped off, billboards destroyed, trees downed, and buildings damaged. Lots of downed power lines and trees, of course.

Right now they're showing on the news a picture of a building with 2/3 of the building literally ripped off and vehicles with broken windows that were lifted into the air and dumped in different places. Another picture was of a pickup truck on top of a wall ripped off a nearby building.

They're showing eyewitnesses that saw a funnel and/or swirling clouds. Now there's a picture of debris like pine needles and a piece of wood embedded in the side of a house. I haven't been out to check the outside of our house yet.

What's amazing is that so far there have been no reports of injuries.

We almost never get tornadoes here. The last tornado in this area was before I was born.

I'm actually sort of glad I didn't know it was a tornado when it was happening. I would have been a little more scared.

I wish I'd gotten some video or pictures of it, though. :)

* The National Weather Service just confirmed that it was indeed a tornado.