November Tornado Outbreak Hits Central Illinois

Several days ago I was poking around on WeatherUnderground site, and someone posted a comment on a blog predicting bad weather along the Mississippi River valley.  Today that forecast came more or less true. After a relatively light tornado year for our area, multiple tornadoes struck the Midwest in a series of very fast moving storms.  When they hit the Peoria area, most of the kids were at Sunday School at St. Anthony's Church in Bartonville (Karen and I teach our class earlier, so we watched in the hall as it started to rain like crazy, then the wind shifted direction and it hailed a little.  Moments later, the tornado sirens went off, so all the kids gathered into the hallways of the parish hall building and prayed the Our Father.  After that passed, the parking lots were very full of water - the leaves in the storm drains probably made that situation worse.  A little while later another storm kicked up lots of wind and rain, the sirens went off again, and the kid hunkered back down in the hallway and sang a hymn (10,000 Reasons).  I am proud of my family for keeping cool, especially Kristine, who does not like that weather at all.  While all this was happening, a tornadic storm was moving northeastward parallel to the river to the east of the river  - Bartonville is to the west. The tornadic damage (those pictures are not mine, just the first 4) began in South Pekin, moved to East Peoria and narrowly misssed a TV station doing live weather updates (just 2 miles from the school where Karen teaches), then hit the town of Washington very hard before continuing northeastward.  We know several people who live in Washington, including members of a family who was at church with us during the tornado.  Their home is badly damaged, but they consider themselves blessed because it was still sort of standing and they could recover items.  Some houses were completely destroyed.  Our house (west of the river) was unscathed save for a downspout that was knocked out of place by the force of the water running through it. There are lots of other data and a few crazy stories that I have heard, but I will not ramble on too much more. Karen's school is without power, so school is cancelled for her tomorrow. I must also admit that social media like Facebook enabled us to help tabs on people.  Please keep the tornado victims in your prayers and of course the Red Cross takes donations!  UPDATE:  More stories and more pictures keep coming up.
(A good set of pictures can be found at: http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-131118-aerial-view-of-tornado-damage-pictures/). About a third of the students in my classes said they knew people who were impacted by the tornadoes.  On this side of river I have seen branches down and heard about some light roof damage.  Amidst all of this, the community is moving forward on its road to recovery.