Saturday, September 17, 10:00 PM. Amy.

We had a tornado today. Thankfully, nothing was damaged.

The rain pounded down this morning. We haven’t seen a shower like that since May. The temperature didn’t cool down much but the rain was refreshing.

By noon it had let up. Everything became eerily calm: no wind, only a blank gray sky above us, flat and looming as concrete. The river had risen three or four feet, turned chocolate brown, and was flowing by fast and smooth.

About 4 o’clock Claire called for us to come out and look at the sky. We gathered on the driveway. The clouds were much more complex now, tattered at the edges, boiling in layers, with the green cast that no one likes to see. Brewer pointed out signs of rotation, the clouds circling each other like prizefighters. Someone asked about tornadoes. Brewer said, “Could be. These are the right conditions.” And then: “Let’s get the cows in the barn.”

We ran over and worked together to get the cows and dogs moving in the right direction. As we closed up the barn the air began to whisper and huff. “We’d better get inside,” Garrett said.

No sooner had he spoken than there was a lashing of wind that whipped our clothes and sent us running toward the house. A long gust pressed down the grass like a leaf blower. The trees all around us thrashed back and forth, hissing like a choir of snakes. There were occasional darts of raindrops but no real rain.

As we got inside it began to hail. Thankfully they weren’t the really big ones; the biggest was the size of a penny. It made an awful noise on the roof and kept clacking against the window. I thought the glass would break.

Until this point we were nervously laughing, like you might at an amusement park. Suddenly the wind outside roared, racing horizontally past the windows. The lawn furniture slid, then tipped, then rolled. The wind speed must have been 80 or 90 mph, not as fast as a tornado, but possibly the edge of one. We rushed the kids into the closet under the staircase. No one was laughing anymore.

We huddled in the dark, surrounded by noises of monstrous huffing and fragile creaking. I had visions of the stairs ripping away, and me helplessly watching my kids being yanked up into a vortex of debris. I knelt, holding Trevor. Brewer held Claire. Garrett sat between us. Brewer prayed in a loud voice but I still couldn’t understand him. Then all of us got quiet. We waited.

I listened for the locomotive sounds that people describe, or the pop of an air pressure change in my ears. It seemed like the pressure did change slightly. But the rushing sound of the wind continued—it didn’t get worse—and the clatter of hail gave way to the rapid bump of heavy rain. A minute or two later the wind became less frantic. I heard Claire breathe out suddenly. Brewer stood up. “I think it’s going to miss us,” he said.

We filed out into the main room. The house was still there. Through the windows, the light was a little brighter than I expected. Outside, the wind was still blustery but not so fierce. Rain fell fast and thick, raising a mist from the pavement.

We looked through all the windows to make sure the barn and propane tank were still there. Nothing seemed out of place. After a while Brewer and I went outside, shielded our eyes from the rain with our hands. In front of the house, at the edge of the forest, about 100 yards away, we saw some trees that had blown down. It was the only sign of damage. We watched the rain for a few minutes. Brewer put his arm around me.

We haven’t found any other signs of damage.

I wish we had a storm cellar.

It’s still raining tonight. The creek is full of water and you can hear it rushing along, a constant low rumble.