Very Thankful............

They are calling it the Historic April 16th Storms. Big storms with tornado's caused catastrophic damage to multiple states. They had been saying for several days there were severe storms headed our way for Saturday April 16th. Mom and I even discussed the safest place for Abby and I to go in our new home should the need arise. Of course the "It will never happen here" attitude was present during this discussion (on my part anyway). These storms were due to hit late in the afternoon and boy did they. Our county (Gloucester) was hit by a EF-3 tornado around 7:00 PMish that night. Abby and I were at my brothers around 630 PM when the severe thunderstorm warning sounded on the TV. My brother and sister-n-law had been listening to multiple severe Tstorm and tornado warnings for the last hour or so. None had been in our immediate area but as my brother said they were all around us. Then at 645 PM A Tornado warning for Gloucester was issued. We continued to watch the TV as our local news weather people were doing a continuous live broadcast on the severe weather in our area and the rapidly changing conditions. My sister-n-law and I went out on the back deck to search the sky. It was windy and stormy with lots of lightning. The clouds were really freaky stretching out and down like fingers but we didn't see any funnels. So what did we do? Take cover? Nope we continued to watch the news. At 700PM we lost power. Still we sat talking while taking turns checking the sky. The warning was due to epire at 730PM. We had lots of rain/ wind and lightning but no tornado's. After 730 things lightened up a bit and we figured we were in the clear. Then my brothers cell phone rang. It was his neighbor calling to tell him a tornado had just hit down the road and it was bad. Power was out in all of Gloucester for the rest of the evening so we had no idea how bad and how close it had been. Below shows the tornado's path through our county. A direct hit about 10 miles down the road from where we were at my brothers and about 15 minutes away from my house... We were lucky and I keep thinking and wondering if the people it got were like us. Just sitting and not taking cover. It will never happen here..

We stayed at my Moms that night as they had a generator. The next morning I learned it had been very bad. 3 people were killed and a lot of people were hurt. A middle school had been partially gutted with the roof torn away.

Debris field next to the school.

Homes were badly damaged. Some people lost everything...

It's amazing how a Tornado picks and chooses. We and all of our family are fine. None of us had any damage. I am so thankful. My heart and prayers go out to those in our community that were not as lucky. (posted pictures taken from the Wav*y TV 10 news web page and also from google)