Storms

We don't get serious storms often in North Carolina - this has been a source of some frustration for me, a Midwesterner at heart who really misses some good frequent thunder and lightning. Today there were severe storms forecast, but we didn't pay too much attention, figuring it would maybe rain for a bit and that would be that.

Well. Around 3:00 it finally started raining, and then started hailing a little bit, and then it got totally crazy.

I've never seen anything like this that I remember, even in Missouri. We had hail as big as quarters and it piled up all over the place.

Looks like snow! After it had started to calm down, it occurred to me to turn on the local news to see what was going on, and it turns out that there were serious tornadoes all over the entire area, including one that cut from downtown Raleigh northeast through town - looking at the path of the storm, it must have been pretty close to us at some point.

We are very, very lucky. There are no tornado sirens here and, with severe weather being so rare, it didn't occur to me to even be concerned that something serious might be happening. A lot of people have lost their homes and businesses in Raleigh and the surrounding towns, and so far they are saying 10 people have died. Most homes here don't even have basements.

Fortunately, though, this is our only consequence - a messy back porch. Benjamin had just swept it an hour earlier!