If you haven’t heard about the historic weather incident that took place Saturday evening, then get back on earth and get yourself updated. From about 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., a huge storm came through with record breaking winds, as fast as 125 mph. Multiple tornadoes of level F2-3 struck from Siesta Key to the other side of Florida. If you slept through it, it is a miracle.

Luckily, both the Upper and Lower campuses survived the storm with minimal debris.

Because students live spread out throughout Sarasota and Manatee counties, they have varying experiences during the storm.

“I slept through the storm. I woke up around 8:30 and got all the alerts on my phone along with people asking me if I was okay. It was quite scary to wake up to,” says junior Carling Landeche.

“I slept through the whole storm, which means, it may not have been so bad,” says junior Helena Beltrao.

Some woke up but weren’t concerned about the storm.

“It was 3:00 in the morning and my phone went off. I went into my mom’s room, and we watched the news. We made sure our bird was ready to go into the safe room,” says junior Bella Schwartz.

“My mom ran in and shook me and said there was a tornado warning. My mom dragged me downstairs and made me go downstairs and wait with her, even though we were surrounded by windows downstairs. I ended up going to bed at like 4:30,” says senior Alexa Kess.

Others got hit hard by the storm.

“I live on Siesta, and I was awoken by the winds. The palm trees swayed so ferociously that I thought the whole key would be swept away. The windows rattled and damage was severe. The following morning I had to spend my day cleaning the entire street because of all the debris. Branches were everywhere,” says junior Charles Hayes.

No matter what you did during the storm, you should be thankful that your house wasn’t destroyed. Some weren’t so lucky. Houses on Siesta Key were destroyed and there was debris everywhere. Trees were knocked down, outside furniture was moved, and there were even roofs blown off.

Even though this incident was tragic enough on its own, the weatherman predicts that more bad weather is still to come because of the El Nino year.

Take cover!