A Late Night with the Triad Twisters in North Carolina

Thursday night at 8 p.m., I was preparing to watch television. After 10 minutes of a program, the local WXII-12 weather team broke in to alert us of severe thunderstorms in the area. They stayed on the air until around 2 a.m.

Around 10 p.m. the weather forecasters began to get some urgency in their voices as they saw cells of cycling winds above us. I went outside right at that time, and the humidity was high, the air was warm, and it was windy and the lightning was far off. My husband had already gone to bed.

There were more lightning strikes, visible from my windows. At 10:20 they started talking about storm activity in Davie County - a town called Advance was hit by something, then around 10:30 Forsyth County was hit - Clemmons and this cell was heading east, in our direction. It went into Winston Salem, causing damage there - that's when I woke up my husband. I said, "Danny, there is tornadic activity - it started west in Davie County, went to Clemmons now it's in Winston Salem. I am FREAKING OUT." He said, "We'll be fine." and rolled over. In the meantime, I put a flashlight, cell phone, car keys and cash in my pocket - just in case we had to leave quickly.

By this time, the lightning was getting more intense, it was raining harder and the wind was picking up. The weather forecasters said some of the wind got up to 90 mph in some areas. At 11 p.m., the power went out - I grabbed my dog Biscuit and went to the hallway. The house shook, the rain was the LOUDEST I have ever heard, hailstones were hitting the roof, my husband woke up and joined us in the hallway. The power did come back on and within 10 minutes the intense storm was gone.

Local weather indicated another strong cell of tornadic activity was in Clemmons and heading our way. At 11:32 911 Emergency Services called our house with a pre-recorded message that basically said there was "tornadic activity in the Kernersville area, take cover". My husband went back to bed, but, I stayed up for another hour until I couldn't stay awake any longer. At this time, they were not reporting tornadoes touched down, they had to get confirmation from several sources.