The day that my dad left, we got up at 5:30 in the morning and went to breakfast before work. My dad is a HUGE breakfast lover, and I enjoy it every now and then .. When someone else is making it for me :)
Then he left, and all hell broke loose in Blair, Nebraska .. Where I work.
We were all aware that there was supposed to be some pretty nasty storms rolling through the area, and our managers advised us to work through lunch so we could leave an hour early .. And get home before the storms.
At 4 o'clock, I looked at the radar, and seeing that the storms were supposed to go north of us, and I had to travel south to get home, AND it wasn't supposed to even get near us until 6pm. Needless to say, I wasn't worried at all (coming from the fearless tornado-alley raised part of me) .. So I start heading to the car. Right before I get there, there was a HUGE gust of wind, and I mean knock you off your feet huge ..
I continued to get into my car and not worry .. Calling my mom to check the weather channel and see if I should even worry.
Then, it begins to hail. It started off as normal, non-threatening hail, but quickly got huge, golf ball sized, and loud on the roof of my car. I hadn't even made it out of the parking lot yet. So I turn back into our car lot (I work at a car dealership), and park about 5 ft. away from our back door and hope for the best.
It slowly got bigger, and bigger, baseball sized hail was now coming from the sky. Then, sitting in my car, terrified, crying hysterically to my poor mother over the phone, I feel something hit me in the back, them heard my back windshield suddenly shatter. I started getting hit more often with the huge hail, and decided that I HAD to get out of my car and inside.
Any Okie-born person knows that that's a big no-no. You stay where your head is COVERED in hail storms like this. However, I was convinced there was a tornado wrapped in all this rain and hail, and I just knew I had to get inside.
So I grabbed a plastic cereal box that I use as a trash can for my car, packed up my purse, keys, and important stuff, covered my head with the box, and ran as fast as I could to the door.
Luckily, I made it, wasn't hurt, and there was no tornado in the midst of the hail.
I came into our parts department with glass in my hair, soaking wet, shivering and balling my eyes out. A co-worker brought me a warm Tshirt, and another brought me a sweater. We waited.
Then, when it was all gone, we went outside.
Here's an example of how large our hail was
This is my car (after we doctored her up)
It still breaks my heart to see Kea like this. Eric bought her for Devin and I as a wedding gift, while we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii, we named her Kea. Meaning "white" in Hawaiian.
She traveled with us since the second we stepped back from our honeymoon until now. She took us to Dallas, Utah, Nauvoo, Illinios, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. She was still a baby, and I'm still really sad about losing her.
My backseat covered in glass and soaked in water. You can see on the floor the trash can that, at least I'm convinced, saved my life, or at least saved me from a trip to the hospital.
Then --- as you may remember, I noted that I work at a dealership. So, we walked onto the lot to see the damage ..
All of these brand new, once beautiful cars, totaled. It's been almost 3 weeks, and we're still cleaning up glass, wrapping windshields, and sorting through which ones are and are not legal to sell. Yes, I said sell.
And you wouldn't believe it, but there are 5x as many customers coming in, wanting hail damaged vehicles than we had before the storm!!
So, it's been busy, but it's just going to get worse. We've been told we'll most likely be working overtime and weekends in order to get through the amount of deals we'll be getting.
However unfortunate it was that I lost my beautiful, new, great car .. My co-workers homes were destroyed.
So, I had it bad .. But they have it worse. And I'm grateful that no more than my car was destroyed, and that Heavenly Father was looking out for me that afternoon.
