Scary Storm

In my last post I mentioned we were expecting some rain, possibly bad weather yesterday.

The forecast was for thunderstorms, some possibly severe. The regular weather news was saying we were in a *slight* risk for tornadoes, but I follow a local group of Storm Spotters/Chasers on FB that was saying the setup of the weather was similar to the storms in April 2011.
The weather around here is very unpredictable, but I think it's better to take it seriously and be glad if nothing happens than to be caught unprepared.

J came in from work and decided he wanted to cut the yard before it rained and made it even thicker than it was already was. It wasn't easy to cut and he had to put the blade on a higher setting.

While he worked on that I moved my plants and gardening supplies inside and secured anything under the carport and outside I was afraid might blow away.

Inside I made some efforts to get ready to get blown away. I made sure our important papers and the few jewelry pieces from my Granny's were in the fire safe, and put flashlights, the couch cushions, some blankets, the car keys and my purse into our *safe room*, the coat closet under the stairs where we go to hide from storms.

After dinner Ryan said he was going to "stand by" at the County fire station he volunteers for.
He also volunteers for a local City dept, but it's here on the East side of the county, and he works on the West side of the county. The County fire station he volunteers at is right about the Center of the county, so if he got a call in the City over here, or into work over there, he was already halfway between both places. (Not to mention, the County station generally gets more Calls than the City dept, and he likes running Calls.)

J missed a call from the ambulance service while he was mowing grass, or he would have been gone, too.

We watched the weather news/radar and in a short while we heard there was a confirmed tornado on the ground in Tallapoosa Georgia, which is in Carroll County, 2 counties to the south of us.
Usually we wouldn't have to worry about storms from there coming here because normally those go more east-north and hit the county to the east of us.
Yesterday it was going more to the north-east, and on a direct path to us.

They were saying it was still a tornado on the ground when it came through Buchanan Georgia, in Haralson County, directly south of us.

Oh man, I've been nervous and even scared during storms before, but yesterday I was scared to the point of posting "Goodbye" to my friends and family and on FB.  Maybe a bit dramatic, but I had been seeing pictures of the tornado damage in Arkansas earlier and there were entire houses just gone. Completely. Nothing left. It made me wonder where the people of the house were?

The Code Red weather warning called our phones, and the sirens started going off in town, so me and Kevin and Kitty went ahead and got into the closet.  J turned my computer monitor around so he could see the weather guy talking as long as it stayed on and kinda hung out around the closet door in case he had to dive in quickly.

Ryan called and said he heard on his fire radio there were reports of golfball size hail on Vinson Mountain Road, which is less than a mile from us, and sure enough the pow - Pow - POW POW POW started here soon after.
Lightning struck something and thunder CRASHED.

Then, the front door blew open!
I had pushed it closed earlier but hadn't made sure it caught and didn't turn the deadbolt.
J went over to close it, and stopped to look out the window. I was hollering, "Get in here! Get in here!"

He got back in the closet with us and there was a roaring noise and me and Kevin pulled the couch cushions over our back/head, but oddly, unlike the last bad storms we had back in March that wasn't even a tornado, the house didn't so much as flinch.

It was over fairly quickly. I thought it was less than a minute, but K says it was longer.
We got out and went outside to see what had happened. It was the weirdest sight I guess any of us has ever seen, even having lived here 40+ years.

The yard was covered in hail stones and tree leaves/bloooms, the carport was flooded, and the air smelled strongly of fresh cut Christmas trees.

Luckily there wasn't much damage. Way, way less damage than the usual bad storms we get that aren't even tornadoes.

Not that I'm complaining, because I am definitely not complaining, but it was pretty weird that we got much less damage from a much worse storm. Hey, I'll take it.

That green stuff plastered all over the truck is also plastered all over the driveway, house, backporch, roof, out-building, every freaking where, so of course every time we go out we manage to track it back in on our shoes so it's all in my floors, too.  Oh well, at least I still have floors.

This picture was taken by someone from over in the middle of the county, closer to where R was, looking in our direction.
I was worried about him being out there in it, but they weren't even getting anything while we were getting this.

A little while after this a squall line came through and we got a bit of a thunderstorm but thankfully nothing bad.

I found out being that scared takes a lot of energy. We had to eat dinner again, and then me and J both crashed. He crashed first, I couldn't go to sleep until I had made sure R got in safely. But we were both out by 10pm.

It was a lot cooler this morning, with a chilly wind blowing. I had to wear a hoodie, where yesterday I was in a t-shirt and shorts. Boooooo.

We got some potatoes put in the boxes and covered, then we covered that with chicken wire because the squirrels have been digging in the dirt for pecans or something, we guess. There was holes all in the dirt yesterday morning (before the storm and hail) so something had been digging in it and J was afraid whatever it is - probably squirrels - would dig up the taters.  We'll take it off when the tater plants sprouts. Hopefully they'll be safer then.

We cut the seed taters into halves or quarters, with at least two eyes on each section, as per the instructions I read on the bag or internet, I forget which. We didn't know how many it would take for these boxes, and we ended up with a lot, a lot of seed taters left.  I guess we'll be building a few more, or more than a few more of the condos.