A tornado touched down here last night.

_{Before the Storm}
The warning system is amazing, they got it out 30 minutes ahead of the mesocyclone. My boyfriend and I got in the car to go find it but we didn't have to go far to spot the storm cell. The first thing we saw: [link] Pardon the picture quality, I was in such a hurry to catch what I could I didn't look at the settings. [link] . I wish you could tell, but there was multiple rotation in this one: [link] . This was right before the funnel formed: [link] .

_Run
We were sitting at a red light when the clouds kicked up some mega rotation and the wind began bending the trees over and debris started flying through the air. The red light blinked and went dark as the power wend out so I yelled for him to turn the car and get us out of there so, ignoring the other cars, he did a u-turn(screeching tires & practically drifting) and sped out of there where we spotted two more sections of rotation & lightning striking ground all over our town. I told him to run every light and stop sign. The wind was blowing the car off the road and flinging branches and debris everywhere. When we got to my street multiple fences were blowing over and every Bradford Pair tree on our street (about 6-8) had snapped and completely collapsed. He stopped the car in front of my house and I could feel the wind lifting the Toyota Matrix's weight off it's tires. The wind nearly tore the doors off as we barely made it from the car to the house. My parents were rushing to light candles because the power was out & we could only listen in horror as the storm slowly began peeling away our roof.

_Aftermath
I woke up this morning to the sound of a second severe storm beating our already wounded house from last night. Luckily, our trees stayed standing and the power returned at midnight. Our fire alarms started going off at 7 am, so my dad removed one and water began pouring into the computer room. We stuck a bucket under & the then I hear water in my room leaking through the AC vent onto my dresser. Next, water begins literally pouring in through the ceiling fan in the comp room. My dad just finished nailing tarps on the roof, but while I'm typing I'm watching water marks form on the ceiling and run down the walls.

To you, this may be just a story from someone else or another person's problem.

But this is my home. And keep in mind that people live here.

This morning I took my car around and photographed the damage:
_{View from my front door: [link]
Down my street: [link] (All the big "bushes" on the ground are fallen trees)
Bits of our own roof in the front yard: [link]
This tree used to be 60 feet tall and twice as wide: [link]
The tarps dad was nailing on our roof: [link]
The end of my ally: [link]
This is the entire roof from a City Garage laying in someone's backyard; the jungle gym is standing on one leg underneath: [link]
There's a truck under there: [link]
My friend's hood down the street: [link]
There are 2 cars under there, believe it or not: [link]}

Luckily for us, it was only an F1 tornado and I only saw two houses who were unfortunate enough to have their trees not fall away from the house. No deaths reported.

I'm counting our blessings.
Don't mess with Texas.