Tornado - 1

 I am experiencing Scattered 50's Syndrome today!  

But it's OK.  

I'll get caught up...things will get done.  

I'm going to post about the tornado in segments.  And I'm going to number the segments, but they are not necessarily the numbers of the days. I might post more than once a day. The numbers are just to help keep some order to all of this. I just can't sit still long enough to download pictures, type, get side-tracked on e-mails that I'm behind on, and do other stuff!  And my pictures are scattered too.  They are on my camera and phone.  It's all a part of Scattered 50's Syndrome!  Nothing organized.

So let's start with Sunday.  I was going into town, when suddenly it started raining so hard I couldn't see with the wipers going really fast. So I turned around and came back home. 

 The weather people had been warning us all day on TV to not ignore their warnings, but as you can see, the sky didn't look that bad. 

 And when I got back home, it was hardly raining. 

 If it weren't for the weather people on the TV, and the radar, I would have thought we just had some heavy rain and it was over.

  But then it started.

My Shug and I were looking out the door and we just kept saying we've never seen anything like this before.

This is what it looked like when the 84 mile per hour winds came.

 It just kept getting worse.

 It looked like a white out.  And our lights flashed several times, then went completely out.  No power.

 And as quickly as it came, it left. 

 A neighbor said she thought it lasted seven minutes. It blew our furniture on the porch all over the yard, along with a ladder, and some sawhorses. It looks like wicker furniture, but it isn't.  It's outdoor furniture, metal covered in plastic. 

It knocked these trees down, plus several more.

 

 Several huge limbs came off of this big tree in our front yard and this limb stuck right in the ground!  Glad no one was under it!

 

My Shug came in and said I needed to go for a walk with him, that guys were already out here with chain saws and there are cars lined up trying to get down our road.  You can see in the picture below where they cut the tree up.  This tree was ours...on our property.  And the guy that cut it up was someone that lives in the neighborhood.

 

 And it had knocked down some small wires.

 But this tree....below...took out some big wires.  You can see the wires under it.

On Monday morning I called The County Highway Department. She said it was not on her list!  She also said they couldn't cut the tree up until the Energy Company came out here.  And I knew it was really bad when she said this is worse than any snowstorm she has ever been called into work for.   Later on I saw a truck and some flashing lights and thought the energy company was here.  I was excited.

But they were just putting this sign up, and drove away.

 We knew then...it was going to be a long week.

Cindy Bee