Wacky, Wild Day

After leaving the Lake this afternoon after a wonderful weekend with family, meeting my new neice Hailey, and seeing great-grandma and grandpa, which I will blog about later, we encountered huge thuderstorms. Here we were, just riding along, listening to the NASCAR race (go Junior!) when the radio station started in on severe thunderstorm warnings. Now, we drive 54 alot when we go to the lake, but we just aren't familar with the counties. We can see the thunderstorms, but really don't know where they are located. After numerous interruptions, which really was begining to irritate us, I finally pull out a map of Missouri to see where these counties they were talking about were located. Low and behold, we were headed right toward them. We talk about it for a minute and decide to head on because we were hoping they would pass before we reached the really bad part. Then we hear yet another warning, but this time it was a TORNADO WARNING. We listened to the information again and realized we were headed right toward it. What are we to do? Here we have our two kids, a dog, and a car full of stuff, really don't know where we are in relation to the storm and have no radar in the car. I really wish with today's technology we had weather radios in cars and now I really would like a radar in my car so I could see the storm. It is amazing what we rely upon when in these situations.

A couple of minutes later we enter a town called Weaubleau, Missouri--approximately 4 miles east of the 54/13 interchange. As we enter town we hear the tornado sirens. We start to look around as to where to stop, but we have no idea and just follow the other cars out of town. We listen to the radio, look at the map and decide to go ahead because it seemed the storm was north of us. However, we were WRONG. No more than a mile out of town we see this ominous wall cloud in front of us and it kinda seems like it is rotating. We begin to realize THIS was a tornado. We turn to go back into town where we stop at a Shell gas station. I run inside and ask the ladies where is the storm shelter. They then tell me to get my family and come into the store and get into the cooler. Needless to say, I was SCARED! We had to get the kids out of the car and of course both were sleeping, and leave Roxy in the car. We felt terrible for her, but we made it out okay. We stayed at the station for about 45 minutes before getting back into the car. The ladies at the Shell station were wonderful! We later found out the Baptist church across the street and down a little is the storm shelter--just so you know if you are ever in Weaubleau, Missouri, you know where the local storm shelter is located.

We met another family from Lawrence while during this adventure. We both had two little kids and had been visinting the lake for the weekend and also really didn't feel like hitting the ditches with the kids. We also met another wonderful lady and her three kids. She was so nice--she bought Jack a sucker and chips because he was so scared. The people in the town were so friendly and welcoming. We called our families and let them know we were okay. Of course they were happy and scared (we had just called my parents to let them know what was happening in case we were stuck in the cooler in the Shell station because of the tornado and our phone lost signal for a bit so they were a bit more scared), but also asked if we took any pictures and of course I didn't because it was just scary. I can't really describe it but a large cloud touching the ground and rotating around. Fortunately, I don't believe there was any damage, but now I can saw I have seen a tornado. By the time we got to Highway 13 we saw the sun again--all the way up to Kansas City. I couldn't believe how nice it was to see the sun!