It was so quick. Calm. Then… BAM! The wind was like a freight train slamming through the forest at the top of the ridge. I froze in place getting showered with the literal waterfall that dumped out of the heavens, showered even though I was standing in the middle of the hermitage. The water was moving horizontally, with visibility about 15 feet from what I could see out the windows, and coming in the itsy bitsy holes under the rafters. Yikes! None of the plastic was ripped off, and the chimney stayed up. “Thank you!” is what I immediately said to my guardian angel. He, or, perhaps, they, are very good and kind. Yikes! Just like that, about one minute, it was totally over. Calm, blue sky. I survived, again! Did I mention the hail we also had? Double Yikes!
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
Is that true, dear god (if you pardon the pun) and that doesn’t look that small to me. Unseasonal weather here too, over in the UK. One month after the other milder than normal. Winter must be coming soon, please do, nature needs you.
Best Wishes
Tony Powell
That’s a googled image, of course. I couldn’t get to my camera… It couldn’t have been that big, since no trees landed on the hermitage… but still… Yikes!
My almost 6 year old is terrified of Kansas because of the tornado in The Wizard of Oz.
My husband is interviewing for a position at Benedictine College in Kansas in a week.
The irony is not lost on us.
Thank God you are okay. Stay safe!
Father, it looks like you and Holy Souls Mountain Hermitage survived a EF2 tornado. You may still have plastic sheets on some of your walls but with the angels watching over you, they may as well have been solid steel walls. Thanks be to our gracious Lord.
I had to look up EF2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_Scale
It seems it bounced off the mountain here and then land again two counties over. Yikes!