E PLURIBUS UNUM

I live in central Illinois where we normally have Tornadoes every year from March through September. Not as many as they have in Oklahoma, and Kansas, but we do have our share.
This year we had one touch down near here in January. The sirens went off, and we stayed in the basement for an hour waiting for the all clear. We also had thunder and lightning during a snow storm. People who have lived here for more than 60 years have never seen this happen before.
There has been some really strange weather going on in the world these past few years, which I believe are some of the signs leading up the end of this old evil world.
Five years ago, on May 10th, at about 9:00pm, we had a tornado come through our town. It cut a swath through here almost one quarter of a mile wide. Trees that have been standing for over 50yrs were either torn out by the roots, or twisted off at the trunk, including a 2 foot diameter Maple we had in the front yard, uprooted, and deposited on top of our house. All but three houses on our block, were completely destroyed. We had the only livable,(Just barely) house on the block for the first four days after the tornado.
The tree did a lot of the damage, but we had five windows blown in, two of which were basement windows, Where my wife, a grandaughter, and I were at the opposite side,(Thank the Lord!)
The outside wall of the garage was bulged out like a balloon, a two foot piece of 2x4, and a balled up piece of sheet metal came through the garage door, and hit the car. A rather large tree across the street came down on top of my truck, and totaled it out. All the shingles were ripped off the roof, half the soffit was ripped off. The aluminum sideing looked like some one emptied a machine gun into it, with pieces of wood and and metal sticking through it. All this and more, in about 30 seconds. The tornado was moving along the ground at 40 miles per hour, and sounded like a freight train going over us. All tolled, there was $36,000 damage to our house. Amazingly not one picture fell off the wall, and although there were a few serious injuries, not one person in town was killed, praise God.
A few weeks later we went to Radio Shack, and bought one of those weather radios, you know, the ones that come on automatically, and tell you when there is sevier weather in your area.
Well for the past three days, this thing has been going off like crazy day and night. One thunder storm after another, and last night the thunder and the radio kept us awake most of the night. We were supposed to have more today, but so for the radio has been silent, which is a blessing. We should be taking a nap right now, just in case it startes up again tonight. We are afraid to turn it off. I guess we are a little gun shy, after what happened five years ago, and we probably always will be.
Now you know why Autumn is my favorite time of the year, not that we couldn't have a tornado then, but it would be rare.
One other thing I dislike about thunder storms. I'm afraid the lightning will blow up my computer, so I turn it off and unplug it during the storm.