Southern Wagon Guys Be Safe

Thoughts and Prayers to the people who have been affected by the tornadoes and storms.  Be careful and don't take any chances.  There are quite a few of us in that area, Joel (sherlock) and Jeff (bamalongroof) are the first that come to mind.  I know there are many others.  My 2 daughters, son and daughter in law live in Atlanta.  They are on the fringe areas of the storm, but still concerned.

Tom

Thanks for your thoughts. We dodged all the bullets in the Memphis area and it's been an interesting 24 hours. The weather radio was going nuts between the severe thunderstorm warnings, tornado warnings, flash flood advisories and wind advisories. Unfortunately a pretty large tornado touched down this afternoon in Tupelo, MS and claimed another life.

Checking in.   All safe here, but 4/28/14 was a harrowing evening for us.  We live on the Limestone county line and are about 10 miles east of Athens, AL where there was a direct hit.  

Very thankful for technology - the local TV station WHNT did a fantastic job tracking the storms and keeping folks informed.  We stayed glued to the TV (very unusual for me) and watched the tornadoes roll through.  They have a very unique signature on Doppler radar and so you can more or less tell where they are in real time.   They move so fast that every sweep of the radar moves the tornado another mile.   Given their unpredictable track, you often have less than 5 minutes to take cover.  Fortunately the storms ended around 10:30pm for us, but my heart goes out to the people in Birmingham as there were four large cells tracking their way when I went to bed. Tornadoes at night are no fun.

Ironically I was alternating between the newscasts and refurbishing my neighbor's chain saw all evening.  

It is eerie to run around your house taking pictures of everything and packing up your critical posessions, knowing that you might come back to little more than a slab and have to have your house rebuilt from nothing more than photos.

Makes snow, and ice storms seem not so bad....

Homeowner's insurance is about 30% more per capita than it was in upstate NY, and we live in a relatively higher risk area than some of the surrounding Huntsville areas.

But property taxes are 90% less per capita. Pick your poison.

More severe weather comes through this evening. I'll post updates tomorrow. Our home internet is flaky right now.

Thanks for the thoughts and prayers.  Northeast Alabama here, west of Gadsden.  We personally made it through fine.  Was puckered up in the tornado shelter a couple of times.  Ended for us around 1:30 Tuesday morning.  Saw damage on way to work next morning though.

My brother is on his way back from the west coast,taking the southern route home.Told me this am that the damage is hard to believe.Went by a big camping trailer outlet that is GONE,just scrap wood,trailer axles and their tires everywhere you look.He was genuinely upset by what he saw.Hope everyone came out of this alive and well,I know that the death toll is climbing quickly and there are no words for that.

My son and I are fine thanks for your concern Tom. I left Monday afternoon for the Carolinas ahead of most of the bad stuff.... The neighbors haven't called to say the house is blown away so I think all is well... 3 years ago in my little town 6 people were killed by one of the many tornado's that day.

A storm shelter is high on my home improvement list. Jeff