Tonight was our first serious storm of the season and of course it had to happen while I was alone at work. My coworker left at 7 and around 8:10 or so my boss called to ask if I was alive. I knew there were storms coming but until she mentioned it I didn't know it involved tornadoes. I was confident the mall managers would warn us when there was danger and I told her so.
Not even 10 minutes later, the tornado siren went off. This is the first time it's gone off since I moved to Anderson 4 years ago. I ran down to security and was told we were all packing into the fire hall. I shut down my store and started corralling fellow mall employees and mall shoppers into the hall.
By the time we got everyone in the hall you could hear this deafening roar of wind. Then the clatter of hail began. The lightning was striking so fast outside the skylights in the food court that it looked like a strobe light. It was breath-taking. We spent a better part of 25 minutes in that hall waiting out the storm. Finally, we were released and free to leave.
But by the time I made it back to my store, I had two massive flood puddles to dry up and stick buckets under...
The best part of the whole experience was the adrenaline. I missed summer storms and how fierce and scary they can be! Not only that but it was nice having everyone listen to me. It was good for my naturally bossy nature to have dozens of shoppers and employees listening to me for information and orders. I call that my second guilty pleasure of the week...
Crazy!!! We didn't even get a super bad part of the storm like you did but we did get hail. You should have heard it on all our skylights!!
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