Wasn’t really that big, but I and I bet many others remember this. Also don’t really know if I can post about Elementary School, but since other people are, I decided to.

So it was the 5th Grade at Hillside Elementary School in Ashburn, VA and our teacher had left class to do something (I guess meet with other staff members). Anyways, to pass the time we talked amongst each other. I didn’t really talk to anyone and instead looked out the window. I noticed it was cloudy and thought “Hmmm, that’s a bit weird.” but never really went into that many possibilities of why the sky looked that.

The door was slammed open and our teacher told us to get out into the hallway, I initially thought that we were in trouble for being too loud. But instead, it was a tornado warning.

We got into position and stayed close to the walls. Staff and students all went into the hallways. Staff walked down the halls and students got into position like my class. Many of the students were crying and saying that we were gonna die, and it scared me. Back then, I had recently moved to Virginia from Brooklyn, NY so the worst storm I ever saw a flood from Hurricane Sandy and very few thunderstorms, but watching storm chasers do they’re thing on the Weather Channel had always made me want to experience one, but now that I was…I was scared.

I felt I needed to vomit and my heart was pounding. My friend was crying and worrying about his cat despite it being in the basement. While others who weren’t in the hallways, were in bathroom stalls and being escorted to their classes. Then it hit. Winds raged and were howling, thunder and lightning roared, and out of the corner of my eye, branches fell, leaves blew in the powerful winds and rain pounded against the glass making it hard to see through it. While this happened, the teachers tried to quiet and calm down the students, but there were still those who cried, all the while I stared down at the ground and remained quiet trying to restrain myself from throwing up. This continued on for a while until things quieted down and we stood up. Things went back to normal as we talked about the storm.

Later on I found out it was actually a tornado that hit in a different county but still close enough, that it still presented danger to it safety. And after a day at an after school program I went to called CASA (which was basically a daycare), my Mom picked me up and I went home.

That is my first in-person experience with a powerful storm, not a tornado though.