Tuesday morning brought the threat of severe weather to south-central Kansas. Weather forecasters predicted dangerous, violent storms, but our day dawned bright, clear and gorgeous. The weather guys said that the later in the afternoon that the storms spun up, the worse it would be.
However, in the early afternoon, it was looking like the dire predictions were not to come true. But true to its Midwest reputation, we never breathe a sigh of relief too soon, as the weather can change at the blink of an eye.
Everything changed around 4 p.m. The skies got dark and threatening, and I brought my kids and dogs inside. As we watched the news and saw the reports of storms hitting Oklahoma City just an hour south of us, we started to get worried.
The same storm system was dropping heavy rain and hail and strong winds at our home in Wichita, Kan. We turned on the television to the local news station, and kept an eye on the skies outside. I sent my kids and three dogs to the basement, just in case.
I do tend to go overboard when it comes to their protection, but with two kids and three young dogs, it takes us a minute or two to get everyone corralled in the basement, so I like to be proactive. It helps that we have a finished rec room downstairs, so the kids can play games and the dogs can lounge on their pillows and play with toys while they wait.
We got quite a bit of rain and hail, and heavy winds. We lost some branches off our mature trees in the front yard, but we had no major damage.
This was a relief, not only because we were in the house during the storm, but also because our house is also on the market, and we didn't want to have repairs to make in the middle of prospective buyers visiting. We were very lucky, as the same storm system spawned multiple tornadoes just to the south of us in Oklahoma, leaving several people dead and one unaccounted for.
