Drew's First Tornado Watch

Being a kid in Texas, I'm sure Drew will have the same experiences John and I did -- going to a friend's basement in the middle of the night (sometimes to Grandmom & Pop's cellar), tornado drills at school, being mesmerized by the radar image on the screen, and talking about it the next day ("75 mph winds? That's nothing. Remember back in 2003 when we had 100 mph gusts? Now THAT was wind!") Last night Drew had his first tornado storm experience. We were in a Tornado Watch for most of the day yesterday. The big line of storms rolled through late in the evening. We started watching the weather at about 8 o'clock, when a Tornado Warning was issued. (For those not from the great state of Texas, a watch is issued when the weather is ripe for tornados and as the name suggests, you should keep "watching" for one. A warning is when radar shows that a tornado is forming or someone on the ground confirms a sighting.) At about 8:30, Pete Delkus (our awesome Channel 8 weatherman) said that there was a tornado that appeared to be forming over North Richland Hills, heading toward Hurst-Euless-Bedford. That's us. So, as I've done many times in the past, I started piling pillows and blankets in our closet, in case we needed to take cover. Luckily for us, the tornado portion of the storm went north of us, but we did get some 70 mph wind, torrential rain, and pea-size hail. A couple of years ago we had tornados ALL over and hail the size of my fist, so in comparison this storm wasn't too strong. It was unusual that it was in February and not later in the spring, but Drewby got to stay up late with us and I got a cute picture of him and John in front of the radar screen. I'll try to remember to post it later.