Tornado Touches Down in Windsor, CO

Thursday, May 22 started out like any other day. We got up around 7:30 to start our morning routines of getting the kids dressed and breakfast. McKenna had slept through the night again and Aaron was still sleeping since his 4:30 feeding. In fact, they didn’t wake up to eat their morning bottles until 8:30. By that time it was getting close to the time I needed to take Ethan to school for 9:00. So I called one of the other moms who lives near us and asked if she could pick Ethan up on her way. After the babies ate, I started doing some chores around the house. It was a nice morning, cloudy and breezy… a great day to open the windows and let in some fresh air while I cleaned. Ryan played, the babies napped in their swings and I got some laundry, dishes and vacuuming done. While I was cleaning I called Jen and talked to Kristan. I even told Kristan that I liked the day’s weather and had my windows open with the breeze blowing through.

Our nanny always picks up Ethan from school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Tuesday prior, I had told her that next Thursday was Ethan’s last day of school and they were having a family picnic so she wouldn’t need to pick him up and could just meet us at the house.

Around 11:00 it started raining a little bit. By this time I had already closed some of the windows because it was getting a little chilly in the house. At about 11:20, the rain started to pick up and soon it was pouring. I closed everything except the kitchen window and the front door. About 10 minutes later I noticed Vanessa’s car was in the driveway. I assumed that she and Ethan were sitting in it just waiting for the rain to let up. Soon after it started to hail and I tried calling Vanessa’s cell phone to tell her they should just come in the house, but she didn’t answer. At 11:38 my mom called and told me there was a tornado warning in Windsor. I quickly opened the garage door to go out and get them. Vanessa rolled down her window and asked if I needed her to go get Ethan. At that point my heart sunk into my stomach as I realized he was still at school (school was done at 11:30) and we were under a tornado warning. We had miscommunicated with each other and she thought I meant it was this Thursday that she didn’t need to get him. I quickly told her about the warning and she left to get Ethan.

In the meantime I ran into the house and looked on the internet at the weather. Sure enough there was a big read blob right over Windsor. I called Kristan and told her about the warning so they could get to safety and while I was talking to her, Jen beeped in. She had called me to tell me to put my car in the garage because by this time it was hailing golf ball sized hail. I told her we were under a warning, as she also didn’t know about it. As I was on the phone with her, she was yelling to Ashley (her sister) to get the kids and get downstairs. I grabbed both the babies out of their swing in one arm, Ryan in the other arm and ran downstairs with them. During all of this, Jen had hung up. I then ran back upstairs and called Matt, crying, because Ethan wasn’t home yet. Those were the worst ten minutes of my life, knowing that my baby was out there and not with me. Matt told me to calm down and try calling Vanessa on her cell phone. I hung up and started to dial when I saw them pull in the driveway. I flew outside and grabbed Ethan and we all ran in the house and downstairs. The phone rang and it was Matt calling to see if Ethan had made it home. That was at 11:48. I turned on the tv so we could see the weather and two minutes after Matt called the phone and the tv both went dead. Vanessa and I grabbed all four kids and the dogs and ran to the bathroom where there were no windows. That’s where we stayed for the next 45 minutes. The tornado touched down in Windsor at 11:52. Ethan had gotten home only five minutes prior to that! The hail pelted the house so hard it sounded like windows and glass were shattering upstairs. Then we heard a very eerie silence before the wind picked up again. To say the least, it was an extremely scary experience.

In my frantic hurry to get everyone downstairs, I had grabbed my laptop so we could keep an eye on the weather, but didn’t think about my cell phone, which was in the diaper bag in the nursery at the end of the hall opposite to the stairs. Obviously the laptop was no good once we lost power because I had no connection to the internet. After about 45 minutes in the bathroom, I left Vanessa with the kids and dogs to go assess the situation. I looked outside and it still looked a little cloudy, but much brighter than it had been before. I ran upstairs to get my cell phone so I could call Matt to tell him we were okay. It took me 10 minutes to get through to him because by this time all of the cell circuits were busy or towers were down. When I finally got through he was relieved to hear that we were okay. He had been trying to call to make sure we were okay that entire time. He also said that I needed to call my mom as she was worried. I hung up with him and called my mom who was bawling because she couldn’t get ahold of us. I assured her that we were okay. After hanging up with her, my brother tried calling through from WI, but the line went dead.

By this time the babies were starving so Vanessa and I sat down to start feeding them. I saw the neighbors outside and talked to them a bit. They had damage to their siding from the hail. The wind started picking up again and the clouds got dark. Since we had no access to any weather information, Vanessa and I decided to take the kids back downstairs just to be safe. About 10-15 minutes later, she heard someone banging on the windows. I ran upstairs and saw Ashley standing at my patio door with Broggan. I opened the door to let her in and she said they had gotten hit. Jen was at the front of the house banging and when she came around, she was crying and say, “My house is gone, My house is gone”. Their neighborhood got the worst of the tornado and some houses were leveled to the ground and gone completely. At Jen’s house, all of the windows were blown out, pictures fell off the walls and everything in the backyard blew away (swingset, mini fridge, grill, etc). At this point, I wanted Matt to come home, but I couldn’t get ahold of him because all of the cell lines were clogged or the towers were down. Between all of us, we had four cell phones with three different carriers and we had a hard time getting calls in or out. People were calling from Loveland, Fort Collins and WI to make sure we were okay, but we couldn’t get calls out. There would be short windows of time when the cell service would come through and our phones would get flooded with voicemails and text messages. By the time we would get them all checked and ready to make the calls, the service would be down again.

The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to get in touch with people to let them know we were okay, trying to figure out what Jen & Derek were going to do as they couldn’t get back into their house. Nobody had eaten lunch and we were just eating whatever we could find in the pantry so as not to open the fridge. Jen’s parents left NE as soon as the tornado was over. They traveled with tools and wood to come board up the windows on Jen & Derek’s house. However, at this point they are not allowed back in due to several gas leaks. As of right now they are saying it will be at least another 24 hours before they can get in over there. The entire neighborhood is on lockdown and being heavily patrolled by the PD. Derek was in Boulder during all of this as his Dad had just passed away on Tuesday night, so he didn’t get back to Windsor until later in the afternoon. Our house became a meeting place for everyone to see if we were all okay. There was a lot of damage to houses, but thank God all of our friends and their families walked away, with not even an injury. Our house has some hail damage to the siding and we are still without power (I’m writing this on Friday afternoon using the battery on my laptop so I can post it on my blog when I get internet access). We received a call from Xcel Energy today saying that Monday is the soonest our power will be back on. We are going to take the kids to Denver for a fun weekend at the zoo and some other stuff. Hopefully by the time we get home, the power will be back on.

As I’m writing this, I can hear the helicopters flying over head. The sad part about it all is that people in other states knew what we were in for before we even did. We had absolutely no warning… unless you had the t.v. on. Windsor did not sound a tornado siren or anything. If my mom hadn’t of called, who knows what would have happened. None of us would have known about it. Thank you Mom!!

The boys did very well during the tornado. Ethan did say he was scared that it was going to “zip” our house up, but he didn’t cry or anything. I think Ryan was oblivious to what was happening and probably just wondered why we were sitting on the bathroom floor in the dark. The babies were getting hungry and of course we had no bottles, so they whimpered every so often, but other than that, they were calm. Cassidy doesn’t like storms in the first place and I think she had an anxiety attack while we were in the bathroom and she proceeded to throw up all over me. Bailey just panted her hot, stinky breath all over us and wanted to be petted the entire time. I think it’s an experience Ethan will remember for a long time. I think the other three are too young and they won’t remember.

Update: It is now 8:30 p.m. and we have safely arrived at our hotel in Denver where we will stay until Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow we are going to take the kids to the zoo, swim in the pool and just have fun!