The Day of the Storms

The tornado outbreak of April 28, bypassed our immediate area, but I have learned to respect the sky. There were three serious tornado warnings throughout the long day. As one storm swept past, another showed up on the map, and then another...from 11am to well past midnight. A little after nightfall, there was a violent hail storm with ping pong ball sized hail. There was also a lot of heavy rain and high winds. For about an hour or so, Molly, Zip, Zap and I stayed in the 1st floor hall bath...while Dan was working the night shift in Oak Ridge.



Here is the dark gray sky in the morning just before 11.


Looking up our driveway.


and up towards the house.


The "before" photo of the two little crepe myrtles...


...and then the "after" shot of the poor little defenseless trees.


"Before" of the hammock, tree and pond...


...and then "after" the yard was chewed up and spit out.


During the hail storm, through the glass door.


Another shot during the hail storm...it was SO loud all over the house.


During the course of the endless night, an alarm sounded from our crawl space sump pump, just installed this month...it was indicating some flooding and since we'd just had a power lapse, the pump stopped working. I called Dan to see what we should do and our neighbor, who was sweeping water out of his garage came up to help me. Dan ended up coming home early to tend to the broken pump by using our old pump...needless to say, we'll be having the new one replaced soon. What a hassle, but there are bigger problems we could have had.


Our neighbor's tree was destroyed by the winds.


More trees in the neighborhood that fell down.


These fell onto a house.


Debris from the washed out streets.


The flooded out walking trail.


Yet another fallen tree.


All and all, I think we fared well when compared to so many around us. But so many down in Alabama and surrounding areas were utterly destroyed. We are grateful that we only have cosmetic damage to our home and neighborhood. It'll be messy for a few days and we have lots of cleaning up to do.

As luck would have it, Dad and Phoebe will be here from New Mexico in a few days. We were just going to enjoy a nice visit, see a few local sights and try to put in a little vegetable garden. But now, it's looking like we'll be cleaning instead.


(Are you sure you're up for this, Dad?) You still have time to change your mind and get out of this! :) I'm very glad you're coming!