One night in '72, Mom listened to the 10:00pm weather report and got a little worried. She crawled into bed with Pop, elbowed him in the ribs to wake him up and asked him to go look at the coming storm clouds.
Pop, the Family Civil Defense Director, got out of bed and walked out on the front porch in his underwear. He was out there about 30 second. (There is still a debate on whether he ever actually opened his eyes.) Anyway, he crawled back into bed and (before he went back to sleep) he told Mom: "Well, .... it's gonna blow."
15 minutes later, all of the windows on the south and west sides of the house desintigrated and all of the drapes were pasted to the ceiling. mo-Ron and I ran out of our bedroom and crawled into bed with Ma and Pa.
The rough part probably lasted just 5-10 minutes. However, 5-10 minutes is a LONG time to sit and wonder if the house you are sitting in is going to blow away.
We were pretty lucky. The next morning we had a couple of mangled trees, a damaged roof to replace, a little barn damage, our 35' tv antenna was sticking out of the roof like God had stood across the road and shot us with a giant bow and arrow, and a missing metal water trough for our horses. (Tthe water trough was a mystery for a long time. "God stole it." was about the only explanation that made any sense. We found the trough a few years later when we had a dry year and the ponds got low. It had made a hole-in-one in a pond 1/4 mile from the house.)
I've got more tornado stories, but i will not bore you guys. It gets kinda interesting around here during Tornado Season. My Crazy Uncle Larry ,1/2 mile down the road, has the right approach .... he built a 84'x32' underground house (bermed)..... 8" steel reinforced exterior walls and a 6" center-line wall .... A tornado could set down in his front yard and he could sleep right through it. Even though he is crazy, he's quite popular with his neighboring relatives when the sky gets ugly and giants are roaming the Earth. (Sure, we all have cellars for emergencies but, if you can make it to Crazy Uncle Larry's, you can sit on his couch and watch TV while everything blows away.
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Mush the Family Assistant Civil Defense Director