Summer Storms

The weather in Texas in the spring and early summer can sometimes get a little crazy. The storm that blew through Flower Mound on June 10th was absolutely wild. We were eating dinner one evening and we starting discussing our yard. One of the kids noticed how green the grass looked out the back window. All of us agreed and then I noticed that the grass wasn't the only thing that looked green. The sky was that eerie shade of green (you know what I mean if you live in an area with tornado storms). Seconds later, the tornado sirens went off and the phone started ringing. It was my mom letting us know that news was saying the worst of the storm was heading toward F.M. 1171 in Flower Mound - right toward our house. We got all the kids in the bathroom with flashlights and then ran outside to take a peek. It was really windy, not raining yet, but the sky was incredible. The clouds were swirling and moving so fast. We quickly headed back in with the kids and spent the next 45 minutes huddled in the bathroom. My children tend to get a little scared in storms (thanks to their mom) and Ella was almost hysterical. We sang primary songs, said a prayer and tried to keep Ella from thinking about the storm. When the sirens stopped and we felt like everything was safe, we stepped out on the front step to access the damage. We don't have trees, but if we did, I'm sure they would have been torn up. Almost every house on our street had damage to their trees. Huge limbs were laying in the road. Our next door neighbors tree branch was on our roof. And a huge tree was pulled completely out of the ground behind our house. At first there was no confirmation of a tornado actually touching down, but the National Weather Service later confirmed that a EF 1 tornado had touched down. We were lucky to not have any damage or power loss. During the storm, our lights flickered but that was all. A portion of the city, a large section of our ward, was without power for over 36 hours. Trees blown down on Morriss Rd (right behind my house) had knocked power lines down. So, even though I could see the cause of the power outages, we were not affected. Here is a video some Flower Mound residents took of the storm - it's kind of crazy and their language is bleeped out, but it shows how close we were to the center of the storm. They pass the street into our neighborhood shortly before the tree falls in the road in front of them and they go up onto the median.
This was our calm, beautiful sunset about an hour and a half after the sirens started blaring. At least our Texas summer storms blow over fast.