When the storms rage

Job 37:1-24

I was lying in bed at about 5:43, trying my best to sleep in since I was so exhausted from shingling the roof ALL day long the day before. I was so tired, I couldn't even get up to turn off my alarm that had been playin for nearly an hour. I didn't much care though. My attempt to fall back to sleep was disturbed by a sudden outbreak of lightning flashes on the Western horizon. I kinda ed and closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on sleeping. Within a few minutes the flashes were brighter and the thunder was louder, drowning out Chris Tomlin singin through my radio. I knew this was a pretty fast-moving storm, and that lightning was getting intense. I heard rain begin to fall and wind begin to blow pretty stinkin hard (it'd been blowing all the day before and all night). Suddenly I heard the music stop but my tired brain said "oh it just shut itself off b/c it's 6:00" Well, I was right about it being about 6:00 but the reason for my alarm turning off was because the power had flashed off. At any rate, I was DETERMINED to sleep in till at least 6:30
Well, about 2 seconds after my alarm turned off dad came out of his room and bellered up the stairs, "Isaac! Linnae! Colton! Get out of your rooms NOW!!" Needless to say, that skeered the britches half offa me and before I knew what had happened my feet had pulled the rest of me out of bed and halfway down the stairs. The lights were on, but quickly flickered and went out. By the time I was to the bottom of the stairs my brain was starting to wake up. Out the window I could see the rain "falling" horizontally and lots of lightning flashing. Now in these kind of storms, they always tell you "STAY AWAY FROM WINDOWS" so what do my dearest brothers do? Run to the window to look out lol Of course, Philip was concerned about the roof he and I had just been workin our tails off shingling yesterday. He was quite disgruntled to see the trampoline had plastered itself to the windward side of the carport and thought for sure that poor roof was done for.
It didn't take long for the front to move on and leave us with naught but a light rain and tons of lightning. Beautiful lightning, I might add. It didn't take long for us to survey the damage: the chicken coop was.. er... decapitated? A broken down shed in the horse pasture was dumped on its head, the trampoline is lying on the ground next to the carport resembling a pringle potato chip, and we lost... 3 shingles? Not bad... Oh yeah, and no power. So dad decided to call his bro, who lives in the town of Ava, to see how he had fared. All was well with him, and the power was out. Ok good. So most of us found some place to crash to try to fall back to sleep.
Sometime around 9 AM, dad's cell phone rang. It was Uncle John again. He'd had a carpet cleaning job at 9 on the square in Ava (which is just a few blocks from his house). Turns out one of the stores on the square is completely missing its facade and there's derbris all over the streets just north of the square. Roofs missing, trees down. So like good Neighbours we all jumped in the Suburban and drove to town to check it out. Our neighbors had lots of trees down, one narrowly missing a house. On the way in, there wasn't much damage, but when we got to the square, we could see some tornado-looking damage. We drove all around town and saw lots of trees down, a couple on houses, one on a truck, lost of powerlines down, power poles snapped like toothpicks, roofs/portions of roof missing off houses/businesses, and all sorts of debris everywhere.




pictured at left is the healthfood store on the square in downtown Ava, MO, just hours after it took a direct hit from a tornado early on Friday, May 2
Below is a tree on an old












Above is the worst-damaged house, with a tree on top of it.


to the right is some tin off a roof wrapped in some powerlines. You can also see some debris in yards and such.




below-right is a roof that flew across the street and landed on someone's porch

To the left is some of the debris/downed power lines in the parking lot of some stores just on the north side of the square.








Below is a barn on a farm in town that was also hit by the tornado