The Day a Tornado Ravaged by Our House

The most unforgettable storms that I’ve experienced in my life happened while I was living in central Michigan during my younger years. They even followed us while we were moving to New York in 2008. The snow squalls are more entertaining to watch up here than thunderstorms. Sometimes my family wishes for a good storm; however, we know that their beauty can be dangerous once it drops a tornado. I remember the day an EF3 tornado touched down near our house while I was six years old in Michigan.

It’s August 2007 and severe weather has been reported for the past couple of days. My town has been spared so far. I wake up to the smell of pancakes for breakfast. Today, I don’t greet the morning sky like I normally do and go grab pancakes to eat. Then, I go to the playroom in my house to play blocks with my brother, who I’ll call R. He’s a year younger than me. We sit at the opposite ends on the small wooden table to see who can build the greatest wall out of the blocks. We are having fun and not fighting with each other. It’s one of those days when sibling rivalry never existed. My parents love it that way. Besides, it’s too early to argue.

On the right side of me, there’s an opened window. I’m not too concerned or curious to look through it right now. There’s no wind blowing against my body. All I can feel is the stillness. The temperature is warm enough to not even feel it. The atmosphere feels light and upbeat. Severe storms usually come in the afternoon hours or total darkness.

After half an hour of playing, my dad comes in after mowing the front lawn. He says, “It’s thundering outside” to my mother.

I finally peek outside to see if a storm is rolling in. A storm is easy to spot because of the dark clouds shooting out purple lightning and thunderously growling. I can finally hear the rumbling from the sky as if it’s speaking to me in an unfriendly manner. The clouds are bubbly and rolling. They look like shelf clouds. They are very dark grey with a brown and green tint to them. At this hour of the morning, there are no dawn-like colors to make the clouds have brown or yellow appearances. Plus, I’m used to seeing storms having dark grey clouds with white clouds on top of them. I have never seen clouds like this in my life. There’s no wind blowing the grass. It’s still. It’s what you associate with the calm before the storm. It’s an eerie calm, knowing the menace that follows it. Storms with this type of quietness are not a great feeling. I can also smell the dew in the air. It’s too early for me to notice the humidity sticking to my skin.

I never thought this storm will be different. I went back to playing with the blocks with my brother, not thinking much of it. It’s do what’s it going to do. My parents and my sister, Al, are in the living room. I can hear the T.V playing in the background, but it’s all incoherent for me. There’s an alert popping on the screen, but I can’t make it out from here.

“There’s a tornado warning! Turn off the computer! Turn off the computer!” My mother shouts with urgency. Computers are turned off during the time of thunderstorms, especially severe ones. At this time, there is only one computer in our house and we all share that computer. Brother and I play Flat Out car games on there until our parents said it was time to switch or get off.

Nevertheless, I remember my mother's tone. It comes to having kids and keeping us safe. The last time I’ve heard her tone before this day was telling us to get out of the public pool because she heard it thunder. I’ve heard it too after mentioning the unusual dark grey clouds in the blue sky.

Playtime is now over. The calmness in our home dissipates while we prepare for the storm that is at our doorsteps. The house itself darkens when cumulonimbus clouds fully cover the sunlight. Our house is normally a bright house with multiple windows, making it easier to see and breathe. As if it can’t get any worse, the tornado sirens go off.

Oh, goodness! Those sirens! They whine like our days are coming to an end. My brother joins it with the cries. I look outside the window while my family is talking about what to do. It’s the same window that I peaked out in minutes prior. I see that our neighbors from three separate houses drive away from their homes in their light-colored vehicles. The houses in our neighborhood are mobile homes with no basement.

They’re leaving, I thought, Why?

A few minutes later, the storm brings its fury. Rain strikes the side of the house with the might of tiny rocks. Straight-line winds make it hard to see as my mother and father watch the sky above, waiting for the time to run. They lean against the front door. The front door has a glass-screen door attached to it, so they can see what’s going on without going outside. They try to look composed for us, so we don’t freak out as much. My sister is calm, my brother is freaking out, and I am not completely in touch.

What’s going on? I thought, Why is my family so scared? What is a tornado? What does it look like?

“We are all going to die!” My brother screams as my parents continue to observe. I’m behind my brother, R, and my older sister, Al.

Boom! A loud bang like a godly drum suddenly occurs. My mother snaps her head back to us and shouts at us, “Get into our bathroom! Go! Go!”

All of us run into the master bathroom. The master bathroom is split into two walled areas. It depends where we walked in from. If we walked in from my parents’ bedroom, we will first see a nice bathtub, which we never used. Pass that, there is the toilet, sink, and shower. If we walked into the bathroom from the kitchen, we will be in the section with the toilet, sink, and shower. Right now, we all make the bee-line into the bathroom from the master bedroom because it’s next to the playroom.

I cower my head behind the toilet. I can feel its cold smooth surface against my left shoulder. I look up at the window, which is the toilet. The winds are fierce and I can’t see the rain anymore. I can see leaves and rocky-brown small debris flying around. I look down again and cover my head. My family is lingering near or inside the bathtub.

We stayed there until my mother ordered us to leave. We went back in one more time before it was finally over. My mother suggested that we should go for a walk to see the mess. My sister and dad stayed behind in the house.

When, my mom, R, and I are walking to leave, I see my dad and Al on the back porch of the house. “Dad, what is that over there?” My sister points ahead of her, which is a tall grass field. My father is looking in the same direction.

“Tornado,” my dad says while preparing his camera.

It’s very breezy outside. I can hear a constant rumbling behind me as I walk with my mother and brother. So many leaves and branches on the ground.

“Gosh! Look at the mess that this tornado did!” I blurt. Beforehand, the road was clean. Now there are more leaves than fall on the road. The neighbors are not back yet. They won't be back until several minutes later.

Dad drove us around town the next day and we saw a bunch of buildings damaged or demolished. Ever since that event, my school started to have tornado shelter drills. They had never done that when I was in Pre-K or Kindergarten. In tornadic storms after this, my parents took us to a church with a basement for better protection. I started to learn about tornadoes and how to prepare for them. It got me interested in studying tornadoes and severe weather in my free time.

The tornado that passed through our town was an EF3. I never got to see the tornado until years later. Before the file got deleted somehow, dad managed to show us. It looked like a grey moderately-sized wedge in the tall grass field. It was big as it was tall. It was the same colors as the clouds surrounding it- A whitish-grey before the sunshine.

“That is what went over our heads,” my dad stated.

We were lucky that we didn’t lose our house that day or our lives. All of the houses on our dead-end road were lucky. We only got minor damage. How? Maybe the tornado wasn’t at full strength yet? Maybe the tornado skimmed us? The angle the tornado was projected showed otherwise or it was a slimmed margin. There was a possibility that it hadn’t touched down yet. My parents noticed it and ordered us to get into the bathroom just in case.

The photo always makes me wonder if the rumbling in the sky wasn’t exactly thunder. If I paid more attention to my surroundings or I turned around while I was walking, I could’ve realized the danger that we had faced. The threat of the storm already passed, but with the unpredictability of tornadoes, they sometimes can do u-turns and put us back in the path of danger. This tornado is the reason why my brother and I freaked when we had a tornado warning not long after we moved to New York. I still have nightmares about tornadoes to this very day. In my dreams, a tornado strikes my house, picks me up, and throws me into the sky. The unholy roars of the tornado force me to jerk awake, only to go back to sleep. Aspergers causes me to have nightmares every night. I will not let it keep me awake out of fear.

As long my family is prepared and we have each other, I will be okay.