At about midnight (Thursday into Friday), as I was listening to some Youtube podcasts and playing World of Warcraft, the power flickered then went dark. Suddenly, the curtains just behind me slapped me pretty hard in the back of the head, and I jumped up so high I nearly smashed my knees below the table. I pulled that window down so hard and fast I thought I shattered it for a second, but no wind was getting through so it was fine. This sudden gust also woke my grandpa up, who rushed into the kitchen to close the windows in there. I met him there, and asked what the hell was happening. It sounded like a jet airplane was hovering above our house. My grandpa just shot me a look, which was a look of fear and amazement; a face I've never seen him make. The lightning was nearly constant, so I didn't even need a flashlight to see. Outside, I saw the huge trees bending so low I was convinced they would snap. Whatever wasn't tied down or heavier than 40 pounds was now flying past the window at 80 miles an hour, and I ended up opening the basement door and was about to go in it, but my grandpa stopped me and asked me to run around the house and unplug everything I could, since nothing except my laptop had a surge protector. I thought he was insane, and even said that, but he convinced me that it was just wind and the house was fine. So, I did.

The wind was hitting the western side of the house, and sounded much worse than the eastern side of the house where I was at with my laptop. It literally sounded just like the window seat next to the wing on a cruising airplane, only worse because tree branches were falling and stuff was hitting the house. I actually stood and listened to it for a few seconds, cowering and shivering in fear. I wanted to go to the basement, but my grandpa wanted me to watch it with him in the kitchen, and if anything happened, the basement was three steps behind us. I just stood in the middle of the kitchen, cowering, while grandpa stared out the windows and made some comments about how awesome and neat the storm was. I thought he was crazy, and he thought I was just being a wuss. Grandpa went back to his room and laid down with his door open, and told me if I needed anything to come wake him up, and if anything happened to meet him in the basement.

I just trotted back to my laptop, moved around so I was away from and facing the window, and since my laptop was fully charged as was the phone, I still had full wifi, so I just continued to play WoW and listen to youtube. I contemplated putting on my motocross helmet (which I actually did do later that night), just because I had a lot of what-ifs running through my head, one of those being, "What if a brick went through this window and knocked me out?". Of course, I didn't want my grandpa to see me wear that thing in the house, because then I'd really be made fun of. 

I was too scared to check the weather online. I didn't need a radar or a warning to tell me it was apocalyptic. The ceiling kept making some peculiar creaking and growling noises when the wind increased an extra two miles an hour, and the front door (which was closed and locked and behind a glass storm door, that was also shut and locked), would move in and out with each passing gust, like someone was desperately trying to get in. After several gusts, I actually got worried that perhaps there was a poor soul out there that was trying to find shelter, so I cautiously got up and walked towards the front door. I looked through the window in the door, and saw no one's head, but what I did see equally scared the hell out of me. I could see the tractor shed standing firmly in the storm. On the eastern side, just below the inch of roof that jutted out, the rain was swirling under that and shooting upwards. I've never seen rain spin like that except behind pickup trucks on wet highways, and I've certainly never seen it rain upwards! As I was watching this, something else caught my eye. One of the far trees by the road split in two, and the eastern half fell into the ditch! Plus, the wheat crops that had been standing straight that day, were laying down flat and not even moving anymore. At this point, I had enough, and gathered my things and went to tell grandpa where I was going. He was up too, but said to just stay in the main room and everything would be fine. He didn't want me in the basement unless we absolutely had to. A pipe flooded again, and he had dumped 4 gallons of bleach on the floor to keep it clean for me, so the smell of bleach would be overwhelming and bad for my lungs. I sort of growled and went back to where I was sitting originally, since I had used two cans of Febreeze down there, and the smell was gone. 

I shut down World of Warcraft, and finally checked the weather radar. We were in the thick of it! The storm was 100 miles wide and 400 miles long, and it bowed too, which meant it was very severe. There were tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, high wind warnings, and flood warnings posted all around. We were in all 4 warning zones, but I knew what to look for as far as tornadoes on the radar, and that was just east of us. I got curious and started reading each warning. Basically, we were in for golf ball sized hail, 90 mph winds with 120 mph gusts, 5 inches of rain, and a possible strong tornado. I think I just went numb when I saw there was a 125 mph wind gust at the Garrison dam, which meant that gust likely passed over us. I kinda figured if the house was still standing after that tree-splitting wind gust, then it should be fine for the rest of the storm (bad idea, I know, but it was 1 AM at that point, I wasn't thinking straight, and I was just too scared to put much thought into it).

At about 2 AM, we only had another 30 miles of storm to go, and the house was still standing, so I gently shut the door between the main room and the kitchen, brought my stuff to the coffee table, put on my motocross helmet and gear, plugged myself into my earbuds playing a Hank Williams youtube playlist, and fell asleep to Hank Williams' Lost Highway. I woke up at about 4 AM to the lamp and fan back on, Hank Williams' I Saw the Light  (which I think was an interesting coincidence), as well as a couple mosquitoes on my cheek. I slapped the mosquitoes, and removed my helmet with a huge sigh of relief. I was soaked in a cold sweat and breathing very rapidly. I could still hear the trees shaking a bit, but the airplane that was apparently balancing on the roof was gone. I put a hoodie over my head to keep the mosquitoes off my face, and went back to sleep until my grandpa shook me awake at 9 AM. 

I followed him back to the new house for breakfast, which was surprisingly undamaged and still standing. Donnell told us all about it! She said she heard a freight train for 2 hours that night, but her house didn't even creak. I guess its frame is built from steel, its walls are 7 inches thick, and it's anchored down in 8 different places by 12 foot spikes, jackhammered 20 feet into the ground. She said she just laid in bed and prayed, and my grandpa admitted to doing the same thing. They both admitted that they were scared, and grandpa said he should've brought us down to the basement. But my little brother was sleeping in the old farmhouse with grandpa, and he didn't want to wake him up and alarm him. Apparently, it wasn't the bleach, but my brother that kept us up on the main floor. I got a little angry, and asked why my grandpa said I needed to stop cowering like a wuss. Grandpa apologized, and thought that a little bit of my humor thrown back at me would calm my fear. It usually does, but not when 125 mph winds are trying to destroy our house with us in it for 2 straight hours! Grandpa then said he was actually impressed by my bravery. I was silent, compliant, and even fell asleep, or at least tried to. Grandpa checked in on me at 3 AM, but said nothing about the helmet or the rest of my gear. He just said I was having a hard time breathing because my nostrils were flared and I was breathing very fast, but he figured I was just anxious and fully awake, but didn't know he was there. He didn't want to scare me anymore by shaking me to ask if I was ok, so he went back to his room and prayed for me. Grandpa Lyle also saw my playlist, and thought it was interesting I was listening to Hank Williams singing about The Pale Horse and His Rider, while trying to sleep during a bad storm that was actually a deadly storm. 

Donnell's daughter called her crying an hour into our breakfast conversation. One of her good friends, Jerry Kellar, was killed in the storm. He was camping at the lake when the storm came up. He left his camper, some saying he was trying to flee, others saying he was trying to tie stuff down. Either way, his camper was picked up and thrown on top of him, dragging him down to the lake with it. Park officers found him the next morning, drowned in the lake with his camper scattered all around him. 

And just 3 miles south of us, a roof was torn off a farmhouse with a family inside. While the mother struggled to free her 3 month old son from the debris, and the older son was in the house and ok, the dad took a shotgun and blasted a hole in the basement door so it would open. The pressure difference made it impossible for him to keep the door open otherwise, and he was able to get his family into the basement with only minor injuries. All of this happened in a span of 2 minutes, and the house was destroyed by the morning. 

I realized then just how quickly things could've gone terribly for us. As I mentioned earlier, the front door was violently shaking in the frame, and I was ready for it to get sucked out, and the ceiling was making creaking and groaning sounds, and I swear I saw it shift a couple times. If a storm like that came again, grandpa promised to not even hesitate about going underground. It doesn't need to a tornado to be just as bad, and in some ways, what we went through that night was worse than a tornado. But we were extremely lucky, and some even could say God had His hand over the farm that night. Our crops sprung right back up almost as soon as the sun hit them. We spent less than 10 minutes cleaning up tree branches and debris, and we relocated our undamaged lawn chairs in the ditch by the road. The hail missed us by a half mile, and the ditch didn't flood. The telephone poles that were snapped weren't ours, and our houses didn't even lose a shingle. 

I thought as far as storms, we were out of the woods, but I quickly realized storms weren't the only danger.