Mother Nature's Fury...Living Through a Tornado

What just happened?!!

Everyone has days in their lives that they never forget. Unfortunately, April 27, 2011 is now a date that my family will remember for the rest of our lives. Sadly, this was a horrific day for the state of Alabama. Though as you will read below, we were affected by the severe weather that violently swept through the south, the drama in our lives will never compare to what so many other people in our state and surrounding states experienced. Our story is quite insignificant compared to those of many others in our state, however this our story.

Yesterday morning (April 27,2011) at around 5:15am the Jefferson County sirens went off. If you live in Jefferson county you would know that they go off all of the time and 99.9% of the time you are not being affected. However, the sirens goes off if any part of the county is at risk for a serious weather event. Joe and I were awaken by the sirens but really did not think much of it. Then Joe remembered he left the umbrella up on the deck and he knew from past experiences that if the wind blows hard it would go flying so he went downstairs to put it up. While he was down there he said that he heard a roaring sound from far off but at the time he did not know what it was. He turned on the news and we realized that bad weather was heading our way. Little did we know how bad the weather would really be. I jumped in the shower because everytime the wind blows our power goes out because we have so many trees. The weatherman said that the storm wasn't going to hit for about 20 to 25 more minutes so I was hoping that I would be able to get my hair dried too. About two minutes in my shower, the power goes out and Joe starts screaming for me to get out of the shower and help him get the kids. Once I got out of the shower, you could hear limbs falling and the wind howling. We grabbed the kids and literally flew down the stairs. As we hit the bottom level of the house you could hear the booming noises of what I imagined was just large limbs that had been knocked off some of our trees. Once we were safe in the basement, the weather seemed to have calmed down so Joe went upstairs to get the boys some milk. He came back shaking and telling me that he thought we were hit by a tornado and most of the trees in our yard were down and our neighborhood looked like it had been destroyed. He was right!

What we now know is that my neighborhood was hit by a F2 tornado. The damage that it left in its wake was substantial and horrific. When we walked outside of our door, we had no idea how much of our area was affected. We immediately called our parents to let them know that we were okay and thank goodness my brothers, dad, and mother loaded up shortly after to come and help cut us out and evacuate the kids. In the meantime, everyone in my neighborhood was accounted for and okay even though everyone had substantial home or property damage. Thank you Lord for this blessing!! Speaking of a blessing, we had about 40 trees fall in our yard, power poles snapped, power and cable lines down, but did not have any substantial damage to our home. We will probably have to get a new roof and gutters because the wind and debris caused some damage but at least we did not have a tree in our den or upstairs bedroom like many in my neighborhood did.

Eight hours later, a path was cut out of our neighborhood so that we could walk the kids out to my parent's car so that they could take them to south Alabama. Needless to say, after my parents saw the devastation in my neighborhood they wanted to get the grands out of town before the next round of tornados hit our area. My brothers, Joe and I continued to clean out a path on our street and in our driveway so that we could get our cars out and get to a hotel. I can not express enough how much I love and appreciated my parents and brothers for helping us. They exemplify what family truly means. Around 4:00 pm, we finally were able to get out and head to the hotel and that is when we found out about the F5 tornado that destroyed parts of Tuscaloosa and left hundreds of people without homes, injured or dead. Both alumni of Alabama, Joe and I were heartbroken for the people of Tuscaloosa and the other towns and cities that the tornado devastated.

Below I have included some pictures to help illustrate some of what I have been talking about. I wish I would have been able to take more pictures of my neighborhood because approximately 80% of the homes in my neighborhood had trees fallen on them.

The picture below was on the front page of Al.com most of Wednesday and it shows the path of the storm. The turning lane on the right before the down trees is the entrance to our neighborhood.

To give any of you that have never been to my house some perspective, this is what my yard looked like before the storm.

This is what our yard looks like now...

All of the power lines and power polls at my house were torn down or damaged. As you can see below our power box was torn off the house.
Below is the view form our carport door...


Below is a picture of our street...

My sweet brothers (Jonathan and Drew) cutting down a tree over our driveway...

Experiences like this make you truly realize what is important in life and how quickly things can change. May God bless all of the families who was impacted by these horrible events on April 27, 2011.