Southern Indiana Tornado

Tornado in Indiana on Friday
Source

The last few days we have been staying in southern Indiana across the river from Louisville. My husband was attending a conference at the Galt Hotel and we were staying with a few friends from college. We got to town just in time to run to the store for a few things we wanted to have on hand while we were visiting and get to their house before the storm hit. It got really nasty looking outside, with the sky turning colors that aren’t natural. At one point we saw a bird trying to fly against the wind... it wasn’t working out so well for them.

Thankfully seeing a green sky and high winds was the only thing we saw out the window - even though we were expecting to see a tornado on the horizon at any moment. A few miles north of us they were not so lucky. 3 exits from where we were is Henryville, Indiana. Henryville is the town that you might have seen on your local news station or on CNN. The Henryville High School was destroyed along with most of the town. Yesterday our friend went over to help out there and he came back with some pretty crazy pictures of some of the destruction. 

A school bus was thrown into a house
Source

One of the stories that really got to me though was about a family of five that all lost their lives. Initially one of the kids (15 month old girl) was found alive in a field, but yesterday they had to make the decision to take her off life support. This was all only a few miles from where we were. Apparently there were a few houses where if there was not a basement you wouldn’t have been able to live through it because the house was gone. I think at last count something like 15 people had died on the Indiana side where we were. The house we were in had no basement. It just really makes you think about how close you can be to death sometimes. We were all fine and didn’t even take shelter (we were looking out the window instead) but just being that close to an F4 tornado is scary. I read that an F4 has sustained winds of 166-200mph - in addition to that their was hail the size of baseballs. You do not want to get it by a baseball size chunk of ice flying at 200mph. Our friend who went to help out said that you could see holes in the ground from the hail pelting it. 

Most of the time I am a baby about tornados and overreact and then I’m glad there wasn’t a tornado. This time I’m very thankful that the tornado wasn’t 3-4 miles south. I’m also thankful that Matt and I made the decision to go to Walmart when we got there instead of before we left town but Norah had fallen asleep in the car and we didn’t want to wake her so we decide to wait until we got there. We had intended on making a few stops before we left the house that would have delayed us about 45 minutes to an hour. If we would have done that we could have possibly been near the Henryville exit at the time the storm came through - this morning we passed that exit and saw many trees and signs down and they were only letting local traffic through (they don’t need people who are just being nosey getting in the way of course). 

So today I’m thankful for God’s protection and timing. 

Here is a link talking about the family of five I mentioned:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/05/us/indiana-tornado-girl/index.html?hpt=hp_c1