Misty Drope was anxious. As she went about her day on Friday, March 14, a feeling of dread accompanied her. Severe thunderstorms were coming that night to her town of Paragould, Arkansas — she’d been hearing about them all week on the news. Tornadoes were likely.
“I’m trying to tell myself that there’s no reason to be anxious,” Drope recalled. “But I’m just so anxious today and that’s not my personality.”
When she returned home to her husband, Bruce, and 19-year-old daughter, Keely, the family did what any lifelong Arkansans would do: They prepared for the worst
It was far from their first experience with ominous forecasts and volatile Southern weather, and similar preparations had served them well last year, when a tornado damaged their home over Memorial Day weekend.
So, instead of getting ready for bed, they dressed in clothes and shoes that would keep them warm and dry. They gathered important medications, phone chargers, sentimental jewelry and of course, flashlights. Drope’s husband told the family to grab “whatever you’d have to have if you were walking out of here and never looking back,” she said.
From their living room, they watched as the violent storms tracked closer on their local news radar, the weather outside getting more intense with each passing minute. Then, the station’s meteorologist highlighted a particularly concerning storm crossing over an even more concerning landmark — a nearby Walmart — and that sent the family into motion.
Their home has no basement, Drope said, and so there was only one place to shelter: A windowless bathroom. They grabbed their two dogs and waited on the floor for the inevitable.
Similar scenes would play out in dozens of communities across the South that weekend. The same wide-reaching storm that sent the tornado barreling toward the Drope’s home would spawn at least 100 others across multiple states during a severe thunderstorm outbreak. In Arkansas, it would leave at least three people dead.
It didn’t take long before a tornado warning set off the Drope’s phones. Outside, the sirens blared. It was an all-too-familiar cacophony.
“What’s the chance something like this could happen again?” Drope remembered asking herself amid the din; they’d had barely six months back in their home after the repairs from last spring’s tornado.
Then, an eerie, movie-like quiet set in, Drope said. A tornado was coming.
Suddenly, violent winds roared, debris whizzed through the air and pipes burst as the tornado tore into their home.
For 15 to 20 seconds, it sounded like the tornado was devouring the world around them, Drope said: “The storm eating a roof, eating your home. It’s just a sound you never forget.”
“I was holding onto my daughter, we were laying across our dogs. Bruce had his feet pushed up against the door,” Drope recalled. “I could tell it was worse than the last time.”
