Wow, what a night and day. I woke at 2:30 this morning with the thunderstorm, and shortly after, the power went off. I was still awake at 6, due to thunderstorms and the extreme quiet that makes me hear every sound of Rex's toenails hitting the floor when he paces during a storm...the sound of every raindrop hitting the porch...the sound of every tree limb snapping. Not to mention, it was hot as the power was off and the A/C and fans could not operate.
When the power is off, we have nothing, including water except for what is in the holding tank--maybe 5 gallons--that will come down due to gravity. I took a cold Navy shower and was planning to head on in to work to dry my hair when the power came back on. Just as I was headed out the door, I heard the sirens start to blare, and yep, tornado spotted and it was as dark as night in a nano-second. I got the dogs and son into the hall to wait it out, thanking my husband for my iPhone so I still had contact. He was at the time in the basement of his building. Meanwhile, the water began to flood into the bottom floor of our house, and was pouring in faster than we could stop it with towels and blankets. Gotta love living at the bottom of a hill in Mississippi.
Finally at 9:15, the tornado warning expired and the rain let up, so I headed to work. Not only did I have class at 10, we had an all-day meeting with the accreditation folks. I made it to campus and taught to the 5 of 15 students who made it to class. We had just settled in at 11 for the accreditation marathon when the sirens started again...and never stopped until after 2 pm. Needless to say, I had a raging headache long before then.
We continued on with the site visit; after all, there was nothing we could do anyway, and we were on the bottom floor interior room and as safe as possible under the circumstances. Meanwhile, it was dark as night outside, and the tornado cell was moving over the homes of 5 of the 7 faculty present in the room. It was a long, hard day, to put it mildly. It was hard to focus, hard to think, and hard to stay calm in the midst of all the chaos.
In spite of all the turmoil, my only damage was loss of shutters (which I was planning to remove anyway as soon as I had time), a few tree limbs, and Libby's kennel being a floating island of mud. She had not wanted to go outside all day--who can blame her?
We have another marathon day tomorrow with the site visit--this time 9-4--but at least the sun is supposed to shine. Here's hoping for a good night's sleep with no thunderstorms either!
3 comments:
Glad you came through the storm with relatively little damage. It has been a wild couple of weeks of weather across the South.
Whew! That's very scary. Glad you are okay.
I was up two nights in a row watching the wind and rain, but it sounds like you had it much worse experience up your way, and Alabama looks like it took the brunt. Hope this is the last of the Spring storms!
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