About Last Night

For the first time ever in my life, I experienced running from a tornado (rather tornadic weather).

The storm sat about an hour and a half away from us for several hours yesterday evening.  About 9pm, the "super-cell" began to move eastward/northeastward toward Amarillo.

I watched and watched, but at 10:15pm, I sent the children to bed, as the cell was headed more northeast and that put us just within the safe-er area south of the storm. We are located approximately where the black arrow is pointing.

At 10:50, a weather advisory came on and the storm was, once again, going directly eastward. I immediately made the decision to leave our mobile home and get to town (Amarillo) to a strong brick structure. A hotel. I went to the hotel that my ex-husband opened here, the one that moved us to Amarillo to begin with. I know that the building was built to and above safety code. I know it is the safest place we could be, if not underground.

It took me nearly 20 minutes to wake up Felicity and Gregory, pack a quick bag, gather the dogs and get into the truck and head to town.

By the speed the storm was traveling at the time I left, I had plenty of time to arrive and get into the hotel safely.

While we were in route, the storm picked up considerable speed and met us at the hotel, which is on the west side of Amarillo.

This is not my video, but it is exactly what we saw heading into town. Felicity recognized the funnel cloud and I did my best to convince her it wasn't so. This was about 1 mile away from our destination. I was terrified!


When we were seeing the funnel cloud, though, there wasn't anything being said on the local radio about it; still music playing. For about a quarter of a mile....then the EBS (Emergency Broadcast System) broke in and that was it....."Amarillo, take cover NOW!"  We heard this over the radio as we pulled into the parking lot of the hotel.

I put the kids and 2 of our dogs out at the entrance door, parked the truck quickly, grabbed the other 2 dogs and ran for the hotel entrance.

Hail had started and beat me (and our Chihuahua, Petunia) in the head as I was running to the door.

We got in, and into our room. Immediately went into the bathroom. All 7 of us (yes, the dogs, too) sat there until the storm had passed. It lasted about 20 minutes until we didn't hear the hail hitting the windows in the room any longer.

Once we were all calmed down, I went downstairs to the truck to get our suitcase and this is what I found.

I have never in my life seen so much hail! Reports north of town were some had measured 12" deep.

There were no reported tornadoes with this storm, but two funnel clouds were witnessed. They say it cannot be officially called a reported tornado unless it touches down.

We had some hail damage to our truck...but nothing that cannot be fixed.

The children, dogs and I got a good night's sleep.

Once I had taken them to school this morning, I came home....we got nothing! Not a single drop of rain, possibly a bit of wind, but that's it.

What an eventful night. Don't want another like that ever!