Dorothy, it's a twister!

Good golly, what a weekend! Friday we were on TV, and yesterday we had the unusual experience of having church interrupted and ultimately canceled due to a tornado passing right overhead!

On the way to church at 12:55 pm, I remarked to Maren that the dark clouds were coming up on the edges of the otherwise sunny sky looked like they might make rain. Just an hour later, at around 1:55 pm someone interrupted our church meeting to announce that a tornado warning had been announced for our area and that we needed to stop the meeting and all move up against the walls immediately. I looked out the windows and saw black skies, heavy rain and hail and strong winds. I didn't get close enough to the windows to look up at the sky, but several of those who did said that they could see the funnel cloud right over us!

As the storm passed over we could hear the hailstones pounding on the roof and could see debris flying through the air. Finally at about 2:25 pm the storm had passed over enough that we were able to leave, although we still had to make a run through the hail to get to our cars. It continued to rain for a short time after that but the storm was moving very quickly to the east, so the rain didn't last for long.

Here are some of the hailstones from my neighbor's yard, with a golf ball to show you the size (and this is after they had been melting on the ground for about 30 minutes already).Not all of the hail was this big; most was marble-sized or smaller. These big guys are responsible for the half dozen or so dents that the hood of my car now has, however.

In my neighborhood we didn't have any significant damage from the wind but the hail certainly did a number on my poor little garden! Look at my poor battered rhubarb:The strawberries took a lickin' too:
The tornado (one of five spotted in the Denver metro area yesterday) did ultimately touch down a few miles east of here at an outdoor shopping mall and did some pretty significant damage to the tune of broken windows and gas lines, flipped over cars, metal siding wrapped around poles, crumbled walls, and flying trampolines! It's a good thing it wasn't a Saturday as the Farmer's Market would have been just packing up and there would have been a lot more people out shopping. Some of the homes in the surrounding area were damaged as well with broken windows and blown-in garage doors and the like.

It was a good reminder to us that tornadoes can indeed happen here. I know that when most people think of Colorado they picture mountains, but in truth only the western half of the state is mountainous--the other half is the plains, and that's the half we happen to occupy. We do actually have tornado sirens in our neighborhood, which is a bit eerie. I don't think we'll ever see the kind of tornadoes that devastate towns and cities in the Midwest, but yesterday was proof that we're not completely safe!