Which would you rather, be hit by a TORNADO or be hit by HEPATITIS?

In the process of documenting our adventures at the Roller Derby, something momentous happened that must precede that post...  We experienced our first TORNADO WARNING!  There were tornadoes close to our place!  Okay, not that close, but we were pretty nervous there for a second.  Well, correction, I was nervous.  

Starting off the day we knew that it was supposed to be windy with thunderstorms later in the afternoon (thanks to John's weather.com app on his iPod).  I had a lab meeting on campus in the afternoon, and as I was getting ready to leave, we both received calls and texts from the university warning us to be "weather aware" and to be prepared for the storms.  Oh boy.  So I left hoping that nothing serious would hit while I was there.  I was mostly hoping I wouldn't get hit with softball size hail that would give Little Buddy (our Jeep) a pounding.  While on campus I heard people talking in the halls about the storm coming and it started to sound pretty serious.  

Shortly after the lab meeting ended my professor came in telling us to check our emails, and saying that the provost had just sent out an email encouraging all non-key personnel to go home and prepare for the storm to hit.  Yikes!  I hurried out, thinking that I was going to be racing a tornado home, only to find out that the storm was quite west of us, and not due to hit until 4:30 or 5:00 pm.  When I got home we turned on the news to witness what my uncle Adam had been telling us about, the INTENSE reporting of the weather.  This is the stuff that these meteorologists live for, chasing and tracking tornadoes.  I didn't understand half the stuff they were talking about and we had to look up some of the terms on Wikipedia.  The storm was getting closer though, and it sure was nasty looking!  Lucky for us, it was looking like it was going to head to the north of us, but I was still worried (as John would put it, I was being a bit of a "Nervous Nellie").  We saw that some of our neighbors were going outside, so we decided to chat with them to see what they were planning to do (wait it out, go to a shelter, stay in their houses, etc.).  John was talking to one of our neighbors who just happens to be the guy in charge of unlocking the basement of one of the churches just down the street from our house as a shelter during tornadoes.  He said that if the sirens went off he would have to go unlock it, and that we were more than welcome to come over.  This made me feel a lot better.  Now at least if things took a turn for the worse we would have somewhere to go to be safe.  We started gathering our make-shift 72-hour kits so that they would be ready should we need to take off in a hurry.  Then this:

The sirens started going off!  According to the news the storm was still a ways away and still was heading to the north of us, so we went out to see what people were doing.  Remember, this was our first real experience with a tornado, mind you I was in the Salt Lake valley when that legendary tornado hit downtown in 1999, but I was about 15 miles away in the opposite direction that the tornado was moving, not quite the same.  Our neighbor started getting ready to head to the church to unlock the basement, but we decided to stay a bit longer to see if it was really going to hit us.  I'm glad we did because it did head to the north and missed us entirely.  The only storm we experienced was some crazy rain/wind and a tiny bit of hail.  

So yes, we are safe.  We were among the lucky ones.  We were pretty excited to experience our first tornado, but definitely sad for those who were injured and/or lost their homes.  There were multiple tornadoes in Oklahoma today and as the news reporters showed footage of the homes that were completely leveled, our hearts went out to those people affected by the storms.

After everything settled down and the skies were clear our neighbor came over to make sure we were okay (such a nice guy!).   He said that the basement of the church ended up being packed full and they had to start turning people away.  He said they had 800+ people (he said he stopped counting at 800) in a basement that was meant to only hold 600.  Crazy!  We told him that we were okay and that we were glad that the storm headed away from us.  He told us that that is what usually happens.  Since we're right next to the lake the storms usually go around us.  What he said next made me feel good about where we live, he said that since his family has lived on this street there has only been 1 tornado in the neighborhood and that it was back in the 60's.  

We're really grateful for all the calls and texts of concern from family and friends back in Utah.  John, Hep, and I are safe and sound!