Night of the Twisters by Ivy Ruckman

"Just before the tornado hit our house, the wind kind of died down and a small amount of hail fell.  The bathroom drains started making a sucking sound just before the tornado hit our house.  It sounded as if the furniture was being moved about above us and then the windows started breaking.  There was a big sucking vacuum feeling in my ears and then the roof and everything above us was gone."

This is from a letter to Ivy Ruckman, the author of Night of the Twisters, from her cousin Florence.  Florence lived through the real night of the Twisters - June 3,  1980 - when seven deadly tornadoes touched down in Grand Island, Nebraska.  This is the story of what happened that night.