Through Every Season
Woke at day light happy to see it again. No storms in the forecast. Our first priority was to get to the store and hopefully find some propane and groceries. Thursday is our regular grocery day so we were low. Josh was kind and drove me and helped me out a lot carrying stuff and thinking through what we should buy.
We stopped by Lowes first. We were there at 6:30 and they were open. They had generators running their cash register and lights. Everyone was buying water.. I asked if the water was safe and they said yes but didn’t know how long it would be until they ran dry. We bought water and propane. D and C batteries were gone and by the time we checked out we heard that the propane was gone too. We actually bought too much. I didn’t know how long one of those little tanks lasted.. just knew the one we had was empty. Need some propane?
Next we went to Star a grocery store next door to Lowe’s. They had generators running the cash registers and a few lights. A bunch of perishables had already been thrown out. They were taking cash and checks only and I didn’t have my check book with us. We had gotten cash back at Lowe’s (didn’t realize we weren’t supposed to) so I had $60. We tried to be wise with our money and got the bare necessities. Our bill came out to $59.49.
Next we went to check out Publix (another grocery store down the street). They had generators for the lights in the front of the store and cash registers.. they were taking ATM cards. There were no lights in the back of the store.. everyone was shopping by flash light. All the baskets were taken so Josh and I took what we could carry and when we got in line a nice lady rearranged her basket so we could share with her. Lines were long.. but we got through pretty quickly 20-30 min.
We got home, unloaded our groceries and took a nap. All the excitement wears you out. That after noon we spent a couple of hours helping our elderly neighbors clean up the muck the flooded lake had left in their yard. Josh and Joel pulled a trash can out of the lake. I am not sure who got the builder’s port-a-potty out.
They were thankful for our help and offered to recharge our cell phone with their generator and share their freezer. We were thankful for their generator and for the cool weather. Josh and Joel got a little sunburned. Josh and I got to take showers in tepid water.. but by the time Joel got one the water was ice cold.
That night Mike flew home from DC. The air port was also with out power and they had to wheel over some stairs for them to climb down from the plane. In side the air port was dark and of course there was no air.. felt eery. We were glad Mike got home safe and showed him around.
Once he sat down we had a family discussion on if or not we should go camping. We had planed to go camping at Tim Ford’s lake from Friday through Sunday for Joel’s birthday, but were unable to get them on the phone and didn’t know what kind of damage they might have. I was a little uneasy about leaving the house in the dark and without a working alarm but the dawn to dusk curfew helped. We went to bed that night thinking we’d just stay home.
To be continued…
I actually enjoy not having power for the most part. The kids come out of their rooms and are so entertaining. Much like camping, it’s the only time I get to see all of them at the same time. We have lots of experience with power failures: 4 hurricanes in FL and our house in Montgomery lost power in every storm.
When the rain let up, we hunted down our patio furniture, picked up the bigger pieces of our glass table out of our neighbor’s yard, talked to several neighbors in the street and called to check on friends that live near by. James called to say he was coming home early. It was quite a challenge to find a road without a downed tree or power line to our house.
We moved Josh’s car into the garage, found all the candles and flash lights. Luckily we had D batteries for my Granddad’s old radio and were able to listen to the news, hang out, and watch the skies for more tornadoes.
As the day went on and we heard more news about all of Huntsville being without power, we got a little concerned about how we were going to eat.. we only had enough propane to cook 4 hamburgers that night. Joel and Judi hadn’t done as much of the work preparing for dinner as the rest of us, so we made them share the 4th burger. Ha. We had hot dogs and other things, so they didn’t go hungry.
Between storms Josh, Joel and Judi went out to look for internet. They didn’t believe that all the businesses could really be with out power and Josh had a final exam that he needed to download by e-mail. I told them to be home before dark. I wished later I had told them to buy some propane while they were out.
They came home, we lit candles and were relieved to hear that the warnings would expire at 9:30 PM. As the sun was sitting we saw a couple of tornadoes on the horizon and one just north of us that turned the sky dark and green. We decided after a while to watch a DVD on Mike’s lap top before going to bed. We ALL agreed not to watch “Twister.” We had seen enough for one day.
Pictures coming up.
J
Mike called from DC the morning of the storm to tell us that there were tornado warnings in our area. I replied, “I know the sirens have been going off all morning.”
Trash was out, happy for the rain considering the drought and fires where my parents live, tornado sirens aren’t that out of the ordinary (and I still prefer them to the long drawn out hurricane warnings we had in Florida).
I thought about having James go in late for work.. but Mike talked me into letting him go at his normal time. Josh was studying for final exams and Joel was on the computer. Judi was dreaming about tornadoes (no kidding). Joel and Josh came out and looked around after hearing so many sirens then went back to their room.
I was working in the kitchen a little while later when I saw a wind shear blowing across the lake and called the boys to “Come quick and see.” Joel noticed a rotation in the clouds just above our yard. I yelled, “No!” Then on the far side of the lake we saw what I guess was the beginning of a water spout; water splashing and beginning to spin 20 to 30 feet up into the air.
Josh yelled, “Run!” Joel said, “Where’s the camera? Let’s take a video.” Josh and I yelled in unison, “No! Run!” We yelled to sleeping beauty, “Get in the bathroom there’s a tornado!” The dogs followed and we brought them in with us. Judi asked, “What about George?” Joel said, “Forget about her. Cats are survivors.” The lights flickered. We lost power. A few minutes later it had past.
It just missed our house. Threw our patio furniture on and broke a neighbor’s fence a little over a block away. Broke our table into a million pieces and scattered them across the length of our neighbor’s yard. It abused our screen door. It’s hard to latch and often gets blown open. This time it bent out of shape and the screen tore up (most likely by an airborne patio chair). Knocked the propane tanks to our fireplace off their foundation and bent the pipe to the gauge (I always thought they should be under ground). We have a little damage to the roof.. mostly from the large hail we got later in the day from the storm that did the worst damage in our area (destroying whole neighborhoods up the road).
The tree near the “water spout” lost a bunch of branches. And many trees behind it and the frame of a newly constructed house are all down. Many of our neighbors (including one next door – her flag pole was bent over too) have blue tarps on their roofs now, a few lost their fences, a trampoline dropped on a neighbor’s BMW and a few other small things things were lost, but for the most part we are all happy to be alive and that things were not much worse.
Minutes after our small tornado a friend called from Montgomery to see if we were OK and to tell us that they had spent the morning praying for us. Wow! So nice to know. So blessed.
Jenny
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