The storm's aftermath

Last night, we had some 40 funnel clouds and about nine confirmed tornadoes over a 12-county area, in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota. Here, in the Omaha-metro area (city of Papillion), and specifically in my neighborhood, there is definitely evidence of the storm's wrath. Fences have fallen down, gazebo roofs caved in, but the worse damage were the trees that were uprooted. Someone said they had spotted a funnel cloud over our subdivision. I wouldn't be surprised. On our street, alone, eight trees had fallen. The strange thing is the trees that fell were all across the street, and none of them were on our side of the street. One tree fell over our neighbor's car and truck. In one of the pictures, you'll see our house. It's the one that has the least amount of debris on the front yard. Just a couple of large tree branches snapped off our tree and that of our next door neighbor's. Thank God! We're very lucky we were spared from severe damage. It could've been a lot worse. Please say a prayer for the families of the Boy Scouts who were in the Leadership Training at the Little Sioux Boy Scouts Camp in Iowa. They lost four boy scouts last night. I feel so awful over this. There were three 13-year olds (same age as our son, Lucas); and one 14-year old. This has been a tragic week for the Omaha-metro area.

This is the oak tree that was once standing on our neighbor's front yard. They live kitty-corner from us. Sorry the pics are dark. I took these pics at 5:30 AM.

This is the house that's across the street from my son's old elementary school, It lost most of its fence on one side of the yard.

And here is another neighbor's treesthat had fallen, also:

Our house didn't really have any damage. Our tree lost a large branch, but that was it:


Here are pictures from today's cleanup effort on our street: