Sunday was quite the crazy day.

It started out being woken up by a frantic phone call from Anne asking if she and Chris and their cats could come to my house to use our basement. Let me explain the situation.

I had no idea the tornado sirens were going off nor did I even know it was raining. I was delirious and unaware that anything was wrong. So I jump out of bed about the time my mom runs in and tells me to get dressed and to come downstairs. (I was beginning to wonder why my parents hadn’t come to get me yet).

A few minutes later, Anne calls back and says, "it is getting worse the closer we get to your house so we’re pulling over and are going to head into this church on the corner."

The first storm passes and we’re all safe.

A few hours later around 2:00pm another storm approached… bigger and badder than the first… at least where I am in the metro. No tornados right around us – but the hail we received was scary. Loud and HUGE! I’ve lived in Kansas for 9 years and have never seen hail this big in our area. Our hail was mostly golf ball size, with a few massive ones (like the size of an egg). These are all pictures I took of the hail at my house (Shawnee, KS). If you click them you’ll see a full-size image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I even shot a little bit of video of the hail coming down. I shot it using my digital camera so the quality is low, but you can at least see the hail coming down and hear how LOUD it was. Click the link below to view the video.

Storm Video

After we survived that storm my brother Brad (who was just there because he stopped by and got stuck because of the storm) and I went to Dillons to pick up a few things. I waited in the car and called Anne to see if she survived the hail storm. She was apparently hiding out in the bank basement. I told her it was all clear and they could leave to where they needed to go.

As my brother and I were headed back to the house we were driving along K-7 when we saw something in the sky that we knew just wasn’t quite right. A FUNNEL CLOUD. I had never seen an actual funnel cloud in real life before so that was WAY COOL. I am a weather junkie. If you don’t know what a funnel cloud – it is the cloud in which a tornado is formed from. My brother and I saw it swirling… and hurried home as fast as possible.

When I got home it was all over the news… "a possible tornado forming over K-7 in Shawnee, KS" – SOOOOO COOL!!!!

So – that was my Sunday.