Storm Stories

 I will start with Justin, I, and the dogs are all in perfect condition. My nerves are the worst off right now but we are ok.
Yesterday morning I woke up before my alarm when the tornado siren blew. I got up and checked the weather on TV, the morning weather girl clearly did not get her sensationalize all thunderstorm class. She was pretty calm talked about the "squal line" that was 60 miles away from us. I thought ok 60 miles that means I can get at least 30 more minutes of sleep before I need to check again. I went back to bed. For those of you in Oklahoma, and maybe other places... Tornado sirens here blow through the entire county when any part of the county is put under warning. It is very frustrating for me coming from a place where that means you should be able to see a tornado if the siren blows. I tend to disregard them since they are a spring constant, and I will not comment on the sensationalization of any possible rotation in a thunderstorm. These weather men need to get out more often.
So I went to bed, but I pulled the curtain to the side so I could see out and drifted in and out of sleep. It was raining but not hard and not constantly. About 30 minutes later the power went off, another common occurance. That woke Justin up and went to the bathroom. (bedroom in front of house, bathroom in back0 I was considering getting up and deciding on getting in the shower to go to work. The birds had been chirping for a while and the had suddenly stopped so I looked out the window again and there was an all of a sudden weird feeling. The trees were straight up, and then they were sideways blowing in the wind. I grabbed one dog under each arm and was yelling for Justin to go to the basement. I did not know that Justin had the same weird look out the window feeling I had, and he was yelling at me to get the dogs and get to the basement. Our house is not so big that we can't hear each other but we couldn't. So we ran down and he opened the walk out door while I looked out the window. In the time it took us to run 8 feel from the bedroom to the basement we had a backyard full of tree. Very luckily it missed the house completely. Another tree lost its top limbs and some of them hit the gutters and deck, causing minor damage. Another tree on the other side lost a very large branch that also missed the house by less than 5 feet.
Since it seemed that the worst part was over we went back upstairs and in a stunned moment walked around the house like a normal morning. Funny part of the morning: I went to the bathroom to get my glasses, so all these previous details have been in fuzzy vision plus groggy morning brain. When I walked into the kitchen Justin was pouting water into the coffee maker. I said oh are you making coffee, waiting on his respnse of oh yeah the power is out. Instead he turned around and said yeah what else would I be doing. He had already plugged in the coffee maker and was turning it on when he looked at me and started laughing, oh that was a joke, funny you are this early in the morning.
We walked outside, just as the whole neighborhood was coming out for a moment. It was still sprinkling a little so we all yelled we were ok. Our neighbor up the hill had 2 huge trees blocking her house completely from view. Buddy went to check on them and she and her children were all ok. The man from the next house over was ok, and then it started to rain a little harder. I went in to figure out what I was going to do about the day, I was still in get out and go to work mode. Justin was convinced my car would not make it out of the neighborhood so he went to see if he could get out. he didnt make it over the hill (literally less than .1 miles away) and there was the first of many trees blocking the road.
I got my friend Kate on the phone, and luckily she was able to cancel my job for me. Little did I know the reason I could not get anyone at the High School was they had no power either.
Once it stopped raining we went on a trek. Amazing how many neighbors became lumberjacks in a matter of hours yesterday. We went just to explore for a little bit, and ended up all the way at the bottom of the neighborhood just amazed at the devastation. With roads nearly completely blocked it was a constant battle to find the clearest route out or around and obstacle. Many of our neighbors with little children were leaving due to no power. So baby being held, bags and blanket tied everywhere, and just about everyone has dogs so dragging dogs along as well. Insanity is the only way I can think to describe the first 5 hours. At one point there were so many power lines just strewn about that a couple with 2 dogs and a baby had no choice but to let the dogs off leash to get through. We were holding bags and passing babies back and forth over trees and lines for about 30 minutes through one of the harder hit areas the dogs were testing all the power lines making sure they were not live.
At the bottom of the neighborhood we got news of our first fatality. A man cutting a branch off the car of his next door neighbor had a loose branch fall and kill him. The stories we had gathered on the way down of people being trapped in their house that was split in half by a tree, and trees impaling the middle of houses and so far everyone had been safe. But for the death we hear of to be a man helping out was a hard blow.
We walked back up the other side of the circle, and this direction the fire department had started clearing. So although there were trees everywhere and sawdust all over the road we were coming from the direction of civilization so it seemed a little less totally destroyed. The fire department met up with some of our neighbors who were cutting the other direction at about 3:30 in the afternoon and we knew that we could get out. Our next door had started her grill and was cooking everything she had that would possibly go bad and everyone was trying to get enough stuff together for a little block grill party. We were HUNGRY at this point. So with our ability to get out of the neighborhood and our gossip that Publix had a generator we drove down. Luckily they had just gotten a shipment of ice so we grabbed some and some hamburger buns. Since they techincally did not have power they could not sell anything refrigerated. We went back and had our little cook out.
The next big event was the cutting of the 2 trees off the house up the hill. We all stood at the end of the cul-de-sac while 3 men cut and hauled down 2 massive trees. When I say that you could not see the house I literally mean that. It is a typical ranch style 50's home with a carport at the end and flowerbeds out front. From the street all you  could see was tree. When the tree was down her little boy said it looked much better with the tree blocking it. Insightful, but they were lucky as well. The carport was severly damaged, but the car only had the back window broken out. The house will get a new roof, but she said no water got in the house!
As this was winding down the tornado was tormenting Tuscaloosa and Buddy had his weather radio out. When Buddy said head to the basements the family from up the hill came with us, they only have a little basement the little boy told me. He meant the crawl space.
Our basement being the little boy haven that it is about 15 minutes into our dark rainy sit in the basement he looked at me and said this has been the best day ever. I said what do you mean? here were his reasons. First we didn't have to go to school even though mommy said we have to tomorrow if it is open. Then we got to climb on that HUGE tree for a while. And eat burgers for lunch outside. Then we found that snakeskin (yes he found about a 5 foot long snake skin and tormented us with it for at least an hour, but when I told him there were drums in the basement he literally threw it over his shoulder and started walking to the house) and now I get to play drums and throw sticks. I guess for a 7 year old boy that is a pretty fun day!
We went back inside, and this is about the time that phone number one went battery dead. I had an old phone that had a little charge left so I hooked that up and with it dark and really boring we went to bed. It was HOT and quiet and the sky toward the west (Tuskaloosa and downtown B-ham) was red and really eerie. I have seen lots of storms in my life and this was eerie.
This morning was much better I was able to get Justin coffee before he woke from the generator powered grocery store. We did some clearing and some more walking around. yesterday I had noticed some pretty big cracks in the ground surround one of our larger trees. This morning they were bigger. This tree sits very close to the septic tank that we just had replaced and lines replaced on. It smells over there now. So Justin went out looking for people to give an estimate on getting the tree out of the yard, and getting this tree down. Since the septic tank has been compromised insurance should pay for it so that is helpful. The tree in the yard he thinks is more questionable. It does have a branch on the deck, but has not caused any damage there so depending on the adjustor they may or most likely may not pay.
Justin's parents got power on at their house today so we made the short trip over to return to civilization. I need my Royal Wedding fix for sure. Estimates for our power to return are around 3 weeks. We will have to see how this all goes...
I don't know what happened in our neighborhood, but all the stories I heard were of last second (literally) getting out of the way before the trees fell on beds and cribs. There are a few homes in our part of the neighborhood with pretty severe damage, but just down the next step of the hill there is more than one house split in 2 peices to the ground.
So many things to be thankful about today, and so many to be thoughful about.