Maggie's Tornado Story

My name is Maggie and I am almost twelve years old. In 1999 a tornado was sighted in my home town of Tucson in Arizona! I thought that tornadoes were more likely to hit in "Tornado Alley," so one in Arizona was unbelievable. There were no sirens to know one was coming to my house so I was worried and burst into waterworks and watched through the backyard window as debris and stuff blew nearby. I grabbed each of my cats and my mom, my brother and I had to rush to the bathroom to stay. I was worried about my dad more than anything and I had thought that day was going to be nice.

I didn't go to my best friend's house because I would be such a worry wart over there. My cat Smokey escaped first from the bathroom and I went totally insane to chase him in a hurry. I grabbed everything I could get from my room that I loved, like stuffed animals, a book to read and some pictures of my family. All of us cuddled in a big quilt and when my mom said that she was going to go outside the bathroom door, my brother, Nick and I were saying, "NO!" a thousand times.

After a while I got bored and I decided to cuddle with my mom and then my brother came out too. Since the bathroom downstairs was nearby the den and it had a television set there, we watched for more warnings and watched the Oprah show. I asked my mom what a tornado sounded like and she replied, "It sounds like a train coming near our house, only uh...more powerful than that!" I trusted my mom because she lived with my dad and my older brother in Tennessee before I was born. I know I was in a tornado warning once in Tennessee on vacation there, but I was only three years old, so I didn't remember what it was like.

Later, the weatherman said, "The tornado is gone from the Northwest side, there is no more warning." I wasted a perfect Saturday for this! Yet there was some damage in the city and on our own house, but everyone is okay, my mom, my dad, my brother Nick, and I are fine and I hope I will never have to hear the warning again, yet I think it would be fun and fascinating to be a storm chaser...