Bryan Texas Tornado on May 26

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wthrwave
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Location: Bryan Briarcrest/Boonville
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On May 26, around 1:00 p.m., a tornado hit my neighborhood. My daughter and I were the only ones at home. I was resting from a trip that I had recently returned from. My daughter had already rescued some of our plants from the constant rain of the morning. Believe it or not, I had thought about watching Twister that day because of the weather.

https://www.facebook.com/wtaw1620/video ... 360554532/

The power went out maybe five or ten minutes before things began to happen. I noticed that it had gotten very dark outside just prior to 1:00. Around 1:00 RadarNow sent an alert on our phones warning of a Tornado and to take shelter now. My first thought was to just keep a watch because in the past nothing ever happened. Then I looked out my patio door and noticed that the wind had picked up quite a bit. At the same time, my daughter was walking my way up the hall and my two dogs seemed nervous. I said, “Get in the hallway”. All of this sort of happened at the same time, we got the alert when the tornado was practically hitting. My daughter later said that from her room she saw the wind blowing the trees crazy outside right before she went into the hallway. She had closed her door behind her and also said that she saw the door shaking, I suppose from the air pressure. Right after I said “get in the hallway” she said “get in the bathroom”. We tried scurrying the dogs in, but one was not cooperative, he ran out into the house somewhere, so I left the door open. The wind had increased at that time. I remember saying “get into the tub”, although my daughter later told me that she was already in it when I said that. Maybe I was talking to my dog. I also remember on the way to the hallway, leaving my cell phone on the couch, wanting to grab it, but realizing that there was no time. I was only about three feet away from it, I left it behind. As the debris noise increased around us, we sunk into the tub further. It sounded as though something was crunching on our house and it wasn’t going to stop. My larger dog, Charlie, was in the tub with us; my other dog returned shaking pretty bad when it was ending. And it wasn’t just the noise that was frightening; I could almost feel it hitting, anticipating it all hitting us. I remember thinking during the chaos that if we go airborne we might not make it, and that perhaps the tub wasn’t such a good idea. Then the noise stopped. It was the longest, shortest time of our lives. We waited a few seconds to calm ourselves and our smaller dog, realizing that we were okay. We left the bathroom to check out the house. I was concerned about touching anything, thinking that things might collapse.

Surprisingly enough, just my bedroom window blew in glass and a little debris, something that we did not hear because the overall noise was too loud. We smelled gas, called 911 and went outside to wait as we were told to by the fire department. I was later told that the gas was from my neighbor’s house to the south. The outside was far worse with debris. There were no injuries that I know of. I realized that we had been very blessed because I knew what could have happened. I cannot imagine being in a stronger tornado.

My other daughter was at work when the tornado hit. She was trying to get home while the area creek was flooding her paths. Earlier I had told her to hang out at work, rather than getting in the way of the first responders, not knowing that the creek was over-running. I kept receiving flood alerts on my phone, but didn’t snap to it being that close. When she explained what she drove through, I couldn’t believe that she drove her sporty sized car through it. She said that it looked like she was in the middle of the beach. The other cars traveling through the water were creating waves. I told her not to ever do that again. She told me that a police officer directed those cars through. The PD did an awesome job of handling a lot of things after the storm. Since I wasn’t there to see what happened, I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt. She said that she was terrified and that they closed the road pretty much right after that happened.

The first responders, Red Cross, area Churches, power companies and others that I can’t recall, were awesome. Our insurance company (USAA) has been great. We’ve had our roof replaced and have other damages and losses that we are grateful to God are not worse.

I have some personal photos and an aerial video, but cannot figure out how to post them. It's been awhile since I've posted here. I'll try to edit them in later...

http://www.kagstv.com/mb/weather/photos ... /216180333

This is the flood area...

http://youtu.be/bWHlJTlaOik

If I had it to do over again, I would be more alert to current conditions and I don’t think that I would get in the tub; I would opt for the hallway or a closet in the most central area of the house and I would close the door. Our weather station was surprisingly still on the roof, but it was broken beyond repair. If my mother was still alive, she would’ve had me straight that day; she passed last August. She was always in tune to the weather and was a natural. I thought that it was just another rainy day and I wasn’t watching. As a spotter, I’m not the type to go chasing a tornado, although the thrill of seeing certain conditions come together is still there. I have a whole new respect for weather nature and dearly love my God.
BlueJay
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Glad you are safe wthrwave
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wthrwave
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Location: Bryan Briarcrest/Boonville
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Thank you.

Thought I was gonna fly that day.

Instead of posting my pictures and video here, I posted them above in Weather Pictures and Videos. Not sure if we can cross post like this. srain, let me know if I need to change it.

http://forums.khou.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2101
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srainhoutx
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wthrwave wrote:Thank you.

Thought I was gonna fly that day.

Instead of posting my pictures and video here, I posted them above in Weather Pictures and Videos. Not sure if we can cross post like this. srain, let me know if I need to change it.

http://forums.khou.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2101
That's absolutely fine, wthrwave. I did notice the images are not showing up. Perhaps you can download them to a computer and use the attachment feature to upload your photos. If they are more than 2mb or on your phone, you may need to use a free download service like photobucket and resize the pictures so our server can handle their size.
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wthrwave
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Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2012 10:28 pm
Location: Bryan Briarcrest/Boonville
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I tried the attachment feature first and when that didn't work I resized to TinyPic. I then copied and pasted the [IMG] code. I can see the images on my side. Thanks, srain, I guess I'll leave it as is and meanwhile I be working on it.
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