1999 tornado

This will be a short post, but the Deseret News reminded me that August 11 is the fifteen-year anniversary of the famous Salt Lake tornado.

I remember being at home with just my sister, and suddenly it was very stormy. The wind and hail were crazy. I was surprised to have such crazy weather during the summer.

Soon, Susanne told me there had been a tornado. I kind of thought she was joking at first, but then I saw the news reports that confirmed it. By the end of the day, the news reported that one person had died, and the not-quite-complete Conference Center received some damage.

Later that day, after the storm had subsided, I went out to jump on the trampoline. Everything was still a little wet, and there were leaves blown off the trees all over the place. I saw a katydid on our grapevine, which made me wonder what had happened to it during the storm. Did it hide? Did it get hurt?

I seem to remember something about chess and Tic-Tacs--two of my obsessions at the time--so I wonder if this was the same day that my mom came home and gave me a little magnetic travel chess set and a bag of six packs of wintergreen Tic-Tacs. But that could have been another day that summer, as those were frequent thoughts I had at that awkward age.