...after the thunderstorms we had last night!! I have never in my life seen so much lightning and heard thunder that was so loud and wind that was so powerful-sounding. It was terrifying. It was starting when I went to bed at about 11:30pm and the thunder was still way off in the distance so I fell asleep, but then I was woken up by my phone shrieking at me about a tornado warning at about 2:30am. It about gave me a heart attack. Then as I'm reading the weather report on my phone, the damn siren went off outside the house and I almost died. I just froze in bed, listening for the freight train noise, and I stayed frozen like that for what seemed like hours, but was maybe an hour at most, just listening and praying I wouldn't hear it, that there wouldn't actually be a tornado. My one cat was crouched by the end of my bed, huge eyes staring at me and flinching when it would thunder, and my other cat bawled so much that my parents let her in their room where she hid in their closet. They don't usually even react to storms - that's how awful it was. So I'm sitting up in bed, scared shitless, watching the doppler on my phone, and I know how to read doppler because I was almost going to be a meteorologist at one point. Anyways, I was watching the doppler, which updated every minute or so and all of a sudden I see the wind shear and hook echo just bloody north of us, maybe by only a couple of miles, that indicates rotation. And just about that time my phone started blaring again and announced a tornado had touched down in a town a few miles north of mine. I think I spent probably 5 hours freaking out and being scared shitless last night. I think I was scared something would happen and I wouldn't be able to save my cats, more than anything else. I know I'd be fine, but if anything happened to my baby girls, I couldn't live with myself. Slept maybe 3 or 4 hours and I don't think I slept well...and of course I had to get up early and go to work this morning. I was amazed when I left for work and didn't see hardly any damage outside, just some leaves around and lawn furniture blown over. I was expecting armageddon. I honestly can't believe nothing happened last night. I thought I was done for. I never used to be afraid of storms, but this year I moved into a manufactured home (kind of like a mobile home but better) and it doesn't have a basement. I didn't think that would bother me, but you know the stories about mobile homes being blown away by tornadoes and I guess that affected me more than I thought. I hope we don't have any more storms this summer. Or ever. Stupid wish I guess, but I wish it nonetheless.

Tl;dr: Bigass terrifying storm. Thought I was going to die.

Holy shit, that sounds terrifying. I hate, hate, hate night storms. They're like my biggest fear ever.

I'm right in the middle of an elevated severe storm risk today because it's so damned hot and so damned humid and I'm at work til 5:30. Like craaaap...

It was terrifying. Haven't been that scared in a long time. And it's almost like ptsd right now because I'm not calm at all still and I really don't want to sleep tonight. I'll probably have to drug myself. I don't think I like summer anymore. I'm at work until 4:30 myself, and it's hot and humid here too, so I'm a lot more paranoid today too. hides

Holy heck, that really is terrifying. I'm a light sleeper, so that storm would've woke me up and I would've flipped out. The thought of tornadoes freaks me out enough. However, I'm glad to hear that you are safe! I hope the residents of the town north of you are okay, too (and all around, for the matter.)

Yeah, there weren't even any injuries, let alone deaths, so we were all lucky. It just tore off a roof or two, uprooted some trees (so I guess there were tree deaths), and scared the shit out of everyone.

OMG. I would've went batshit and started crying.

I remember last summer we had a tornado warning. I stepped onto my balcony and there was ominous clouds... very dark. I was scared. Nothing happened though and I was very glad.

I was crying, not so much with the batshit - I was trying to keep the cats calm and coralled in case I had to get them to shelter.