Cook Family: A Very Scary Storm

Last night at about 10 o'clock, it started to storm. We had no reason for concern since we don't get local channels anymore, and we were unaware of any thunderstorm warnings. Well, little did we know there was a severe thunderstorm warning for our area. It began to rain extremely hard, and then began to hail. The hail intensified and was beating our house for every bit of 10 to 15 minutes. About 2 minutes into the storm, Matt went upstairs to get Nathan since his crib is pushed right against the window in his room. We then got Natalie out of bed as well, because we didn't want to leave her alone upstairs. We all went to the basement....since we again didn't know the severity of the storm, or what type of warnings that had been issued for our area. Though I'm sure a tornado is unlikely here, we didn't want to take any chances. At one point when Matt had gone back upstairs, I was in the basement with Nolan and Nathan, covering them with pillows. The sound of the hail was deafening. I have never been so scared of a storm in my life!

When the storm was over, we surveyed the damage, as best we could at 10:30 at night. The wind had blown over our plant on the back deck, and shredded my mums that were on the patio table. The cover to our grill was lying on the deck still around the grill, but totally ripped...it was blown around so much that it just tore apart. A tree was blown down in our neighbor's yard, and another neighbor's patio table was flipped over. The picture above was taken last night of the deck covered with hail. Below are some pics I took this morning.