Aren’t those folks always the ones interviewed on the news when bad weather hits?
I got to experience my own bad weather this afternoon! No, no trailers were thrown around. Or none that I saw. Haven’t heard of a tornado hitting a local trailer park either, but I do know some trees are down in town. This is what happened with us today.
It will help if you know about Alabama geography and today’s weather. We were going to Bass Pro Shop in Leeds via Pell City. By the time we got to Pell City, Ricky’s back really started hurting. Suddenly. So much that we stopped at Wal-Mart for some Aleve. I was wanting a Coke, so we went to the drive thru at Krystal. A loud, booming voice came through the air on some outside speaker system saying something we couldn’t understand, but got the gist that it was Pell City’s weather system. Then the sirens went off. As so often happens, the weather looked fine right then. We didn’t even know there was any bad weather on the horizon. Hadn’t had the radio on and had not checked the weather for the day. The radio was turned on immediately and we were informed the storm was headed where we were going as well as the precise spot we were sitting, so we turned around and headed home.
About 15 minutes from home we hear some bad stuff from a totally different system will hit Sylacauga in 15 minutes. And it did! Boyeee hidey – as Cousin Cliff used to say. It did.
Probably a quarter of a mile from our house as the crow flies, we saw weird sheets of rain crossing the road in front of us, but we kept going — until we got in those weird sheets of rain. Limbs and stuff started flying all around, a big something hit the windshield and lots of smaller somethings hit. Why do I never have the camera with me when I need it?! We and the car in front of us stopped in a semi clearing. Meaning the trees were close to the road on the opposite side, but 20 feet off the road on our side. We watched as a pine in front of us fell into some power lines. Would have fallen on the road, but the lines held it up. We watched also, as those lines arced and flashed. Then it all settled down, as quickly as it began and we took a chance passing under the tree.
(A picture of the tree later on in the day. You can click on it for a larger view, but it still doesn’t look as impressive as it does in real life. The lines holding the tree? Not the ones running parallel to the road, but the ones that cross the road!)
Oh goodness, so glad y’all are ok! We had a tornado warning in our county but it was north of us, thank goodness all we got at our home was rain which our garden needed sooooooooooo bad!
Gosh- that sounds like the same crazy storm that hit us. We could not believe how fast it hit us. One block over was some real tree damage, but we were lucky. Saw Erin at the Estate Sale down the block. Prices were too high-I may go back this weekend for discount days.