Wild Night in Wichita

 This was two nights ago... The real storms were far south of us, and the clouds were beautiful. These hangars are across the runway from us. Ours is just past the ones on the right.  The photo below is looking toward the west from our hangar about 3o minutes later.

We do take storm warnings seriously here, because the storms are so potentially dangerous. Yesterday the whole central portion of the US was under tornado watches and warnings with Wichita being in the dead center.  The weather service really did a good job warning everyone for almost a whole day ahead of the storms.  They knew multiple deadly tornadoes across the country were likely...and they would be here close to or just after dark.

So we decided to have a cook out, invited a couple of friends over for supper, and I spent the afternoon preparing... for dinner.   I marinated some chicken for fajitas, prepared a spicy pico de gallo, made some guacamole,  sliced the onions and peppers to put on the grill and made a cake all while keeping an eye on the weather.

 The sun was shining and the wind was blowing about 30-35 mph while I grilled the chicken.

 Lemon cake with lemon pudding, pineapple, whipped cream, coconut and pecans. Yum!


After we ate we made our storm preparations.   We moved our lawn chairs to the driveway so we could watch the approaching storms.  

This was an interesting cloud. It shows how the winds were pushing the clouds past us. 
It was still sunny with no rain. Yet. 

The winds were becoming stronger and it was getting dark.  We watched the lightning in the distance and the weather radar on TV.  After dark, we couldn't see if a tornado was coming at us. This is very scary at night!  Eventually the local channels were reporting damage from a tornado a half mile wide bearing down on Wichita coming up from the south.  When the reports said the tornado was over Andover, only five miles away, we headed for the basement.  We had been preparing to go to the basement for a while, and I had rounded up the flashlights, blankets, water, weather radio, first aid kit and two chairs.  I felt very guilty about leaving my birds upstairs alone, but they seem to have forgiven me.


When the storm hit, we had hail,  high winds and two inches of rain in less than 5 minutes, but thankfully no tornado.  We were lucky.  My attention turned to following the storms up by Lindsey, and my brother who was down in harm's way in Oklahoma.  The storms missed Lindsey, but the town Nathan was staying in took a direct hit. I believe three towns he had been in yesterday all got hit by tornadoes.   I can't put into words how hard it is to see radar reports of tornadoes where my friends and family are.  Thank heavens for being able to stay in touch.  Now I understand why everyone says "I love you" during a tornado. 

About midnight I took a walk to see how much water was coming from the pond.  This is in my driveway.

 The water had hidden my driveway and yard.

 Looks like I need a boat to collect my mail!  This should be road and grass.

 This morning I went out to see if there were any fish on the spill way.  Yep, here's a 10 inch catfish who was trying to swim upstream.  I got him in a bucket and returned him to his home.

This looks better today but you can still see where the water is standing in the yard.

It is still flowing out of the pond.  I will never get this area mowed...

Uh oh, I found some driveway damage.... We share this part with the neighbors who have these sheds. 

This evening Rod filled in the hole with gravel from the huge pile we have left over from last year.  I hope we don't go through this too many times this year.  I just about worried myself out.  

Lessons learned:   weather radar is priceless, keep a tornado kit of basement supplies ready, don't travel with Nathan during tornado season, and keep telling your family you love them.