One Hailacious Evening

They kept predicting bad weather and boy were they right. Around 6:30 this evening (Friday night - I'm posting this late so this will probably show up as a Saturday post) the sirens went off. We keep a little closet in the middle of the house ready for tornadoes. Several tornadoes had already been sighted west of us. Then the hail started. We watched it at first, but the hailstones got bigger and bigger and louder and louder so we got in the closet. It was crazy loud like thousands of people shooting guns all at once. Two giant ones popped right through our living room skylight and into our house leaving one giant hole and a smaller hole - the smaller hole is about the size of a dessert plate.
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So we are in the closet and it is hailing all over our living room floor. (Is hailing a word?) It finally started to let up and we came out of the closet and saw the mess. It was still raining IN OUR HOUSE. I started running around grabbing things like tarps and buckets and mops (oh my!). Well My Sweetie was not into having rain in the living room. He decided to go onto the roof to cover the skylight. While this was a good idea, housewise, I didn't see it as a good idea, Sweetiewise. It was still raining and there was some thunder and lightning in the distance, not to mention the roof being soaking wet. He stuffed his jacket with what he thought he'd need and I made him swear to forget about it if he had no traction on the roof. I made sure he got up the ladder okay, but now I was more nervous than I was during the storm. I stood under the skylight watching when he cussed very loudly. My heart jumped and I'm like "WHAT!?! WHAT!?!" He said, the duct tape wasn't sticking. I yelled "Would clothespins work?" He said, "No, what about alligator clips? Don't we have some?" Well they're called "binder clips," but I knew exactly what he meant and ran around gathering some up. I then ran out in the rain and threw them up to him, one at a time.

They worked fine. For a while. Then the wind picked up. My Sweetie found some more somewhere and went BACK onto the roof and added the other ones. That was several hours ago and they are still holding, but it is supposed to be very windy tomorrow. He hasn't been in the attic yet to see if there are roof leaks. He'll do that tomorrow. We were pretty much spent at this point, but I cooked dinner. He also spent a lot of time on the phone with our insurance company. They were overwhelmed with calls. I told him, well if they want to take their time, they just may end up replacing our flooring in here. There is hardwood AND carpet under the skylight - it's where they meet. The skylight over the kitchen table is also broken, but only on the outer layer - I didn't even know they HAD two layers, but the skylight in the bathroom made it through unscathed. There may be just one dent in my truck, but it was getting dark and it was hard to tell. My daughter's car was here, because she met her date here, and I think it made it, but daylight may bring a different story (like with my truck).

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I was glad the cats were in their room this whole time, but I was afraid old Jake (the eighteen-year-old) might have had a heart attack. He is very weather sensitive. After we got back to some semblance of normalcy, I let them out. They were thrilled with all the strange stuff and loved playing with the tarp. I'm just glad we're all okay. I saw pictures of the tornado damage on the news, and it was awful: 18-wheelers tipped over, buildings flattened, the whole roof of a church gone. As of 10:30 p.m., there was only one death reported, but several injuries. It could have been worse. And now we have two holes in our house.