On June 16th, a Friday evening, a thunder storm had started. Ryan and I love storms and think they’re cool to watch, so we had turned off lights and were staring out our back windows. Zane was in bed asleep and Hyrum and Cora had just come downstairs to try to procrastinate bedtime. Staring out our glass back door, I said to Ryan, “this is the craziest I think I’ve ever seen the lightning. Look at all those little flashes in the clouds all over the place!”
Ryan was thinking, “that sky looks green. Is that what Nebraska natives are talking about when they say a green sky means head to the basement?”
And then I heard the tornado siren. This was not a drill.
I was scared and a bit panicky. I yelled at Ryan to go grab Zane, I grabbed Ivy and immediately shoved Hyrum and Cora down to the basement without even grabbing my phone or anything else.
We all crammed into our tiny basement bathroom and I breathed a sigh of relief when Ryan made it down with a very sleepy Zane over his shoulder. There we were, wind howling above us- six people in a five by five foot bathroom.
The kids were a little scared already, but then the power went off and we were plunged into pure darkness. Luckily Ryan had brought his phone, so he turned on his flashlight app. Cora was in pure panic mode now, as she can be easily scared and is especially scared of the dark. I could see on her little face that she was just terrified. Hyrum was scared too, but he was doing his best to be brave.
We tried to keep the kids’ minds off of the storm, but with no power or internet, and Ryan’s phone having only a little battery, it was difficult. We tried a “would you rather” type game but Cora refused to play and just kept saying how scared she was. We realized we should say a prayer, so in that small space, our family knelt and offered a plea to our Father in Heaven that we would be safe, and that no harm would come to our family in this storm. I felt some peace after that.
Twice Ryan’s phone set off on its own alarm to warn us of the tornado and the lightning, which scared the kids (and myself) even further. I later found out that Cora was so scared she threw up in her mouth. I could just hear the wind pounding our house and it was hard to keep images out of my head of houses torn off their foundations and remembering stories of teachers shielding their students from the intense wind.
And then, I could hear there was a change in the wind. We thought it had passed, but I made Ryan stay with us until the tornado warning time had passed. We were in that bathroom around 45 minutes. Then we sent him out to check, and he gave us the go ahead to come out.
We looked out the back glass door and it was still kind of green and muggy outside so it was hard to see, but it looked like the door had a crack in it. We went out our front door and saw most of our neighbors come outside too. We all looked shell-shocked. The atmosphere seemed so odd around me.
Our front tree, which used to stand as tall as our two-story house had cracked in half. Our neighbor’s fence had been torn down. Our siding and our neighbor’s siding was torn off on one side of our houses. We later came to know that most houses in our neighborhood had some sort of damage. A lot of people had very torn up roofs, a lot of trees looked pulled out of the ground entirely, so many fences down, so much siding missing. It was like an upside-down world at first.
We talked to our neighbors for a bit, some who said they’ve lived here twenty years and never seen anything like that happen before. Then we all went inside and tried to sleep. We let all the kids sleep in our room since we were all pretty shaken up.
In the morning, we got to work. We cleaned up the siding and did what we could with the power still out. Neighbors helped neighbors.
Our neighbor let us borrow their generator to run our sump pump for a bit. That was the first time we’d been in the basement since the storm, and what we discovered was extremely disheartening. Flooded. About an inch of water covered almost the entire basement.
Our sump pump runs on electricity, and with the power out it had stopped working. Us being new to the whole “sump pump” experience, we didn’t realize flooding would be a concern with the power out. We spent the rest of that morning bringing all the things we could save out of the basement upstairs, and then we tried to remove as much of the carpet by ourselves as we could.
We went without power for two days, including Sunday, where we had a combined hour sacrament meeting with two other wards also affected by the storm. That meeting was lit by generators since the church was also out of power due to some extreme damage to power lines. Some people in our ward were without power for five days.
Overall, we had about $20,000 worth of damage to our home that night. Later, it was confirmed that there had been two tornadoes in the neighboring town, but we had had 80 mph straight line winds, which is as fast as tornado winds, just not in a swirl.
What I mainly felt after that experience was so extremely blessed. I knew that Heavenly Father had protected my family during that storm. I felt it so strongly, and I was so grateful. As we were praying in the basement in that storm, that was the only thing I was asking Heavenly Father for. I only wanted my family safe. And I am so grateful to Him that we were protected that night.
Two weeks later we had another storm, with palm-sized spiky hail. It sounded like lots of baseballs hitting all over the house. Ryan wanted to run outside to grab one, but I wouldn’t let him because I didn’t want him to die (he likes to tell that story). Here’s a friend’s picture of it:
That was another $20,000 worth of damage. So lucky us, we’ve been dealing with insurance inspectors and contractors and house repairs for the past month and a half. And we’ve only had one minor thing actually repaired so far. I am grateful we have insurance though, and that our insurance company has been so helpful and generous.
So, that’s our story. Our story of the storm. Every kid in our area talks about it. I’m thinking that this is something that will always stick with us, a vivid memory forever.
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