Thursday, April 16, 2009

God's Been Good To Me!!

I have learned just how addicted to technology that I am in the last few days. Thanks to some stormy weather, we were without power for about 48 hours!! It even took a few hours over that to get our phone/internet/cable back on. (That's what we get for bundling!!)

A tornado hit Grant mountain on Friday. I know that most people reading this have no idea the geography of my town so bear with me. Grant is very close to where I live. When the kids in our area hit high school, they go to a school called Kate D. Smith DAR High School. Which is located in Grant. So, tornado hits a few miles away. It blew right over us. We had some wind, rain and hail. Little, bitty pea-sized hail. There were pictures on the news of softball sized hail in some places. SOFTBALL!!!! The biggest hail I have ever seen has been golf ball size. Can you imagine softball sized hunks of ice falling out of the sky?

After blowing over us, the tornado hit another area on the other side of us. A waterfront area was decimated. Trees snapped like toothpicks. Homes and businesses damaged or destroyed. But, no people killed. Stuff can be replaced, people can't.

I went to bed Sunday thinking everything was just fine and dandy. Which, at the time I went to bed, everything WAS fine and dandy. However, around one or two a big wind came blowing through town. It was called a "gravity wind with a low level jet stream" Ok, whatever. All I know is it was bad. I mean really bad. When I got up Monday there were limbs and pine straw all over the yard, shingles off the roof, trash cans and coolers blown about, and a basketball goal knocked over. A bunch of people from church got together two weeks ago for a work day,. The church and yard had looked so nice. Now the parking lot was full of junk, as well as the yard. I called my sister to look on the Newschannel 19 website to see what was going on. Turns out, we were extremely blessed to have received so little damage. Less than a mile from us the yacht club had been hit hard. Two boat ramps had blown loose from their docking and drifted 200 yards from their original location. These boat ramps had boats attached to them!!!
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So, my sister offered to keep the boys since our power was off. We are totally dependent on electricity. I had no way to cook for the boys. Plus, not knowing how long it was going to be off, I really did not want to open the refrigerator. So they go to spend the night. When Mark got up (he is on his night shift schedule this week) he was asking if the power was still off. He said it went off around two that morning. It was getting on up in the day so we headed out for some lunch. Oh my goodness!! Downtown Guntersville was shocking! Trees, powerlines were down, even a port-a potty was turned over. (I would HATE to responsible for cleaning THAT!!) One thing that amazed us was that all these huge old oak trees that were down in people's yards were down in the yards, not on the houses or churches or businesses. They fell in front of the buildings. God protected people. I have not heard of any deaths in Alabama from the storms Friday or Monday. God has really been so good to us. There were a few places that received damage Monday. To my knowledge, there is not anyone who lost everything. We lost a few shingles off the roof and the food in our fridge. Nothing valuable like all of our pictures or a person. So now you know what song I have been singing for the last few days.

6 comments:

Annemarie said...

oh MY! I am so thankful that you all are OK. That sort of weather is so very frightening!

~Annemarie

Kelli said...

We are very thankful too. We were expecting Friday to be bad. The boys and I went out Friday to "batten down the hatch" so to speak, making sure loose items were secured and such. Monday morning just took us by surprise. From what I have read in the paper even the forecasters were taken aback by it.

rthling said...

Wow! That sounds terrifying.
I am quite scared in storms. (Why do I live in the forest again?)
I've heard that straight line winds can be as destructive, or even more sometimes, than a tornado.
I'm glad that you and your family are safe.

Kelli said...

You live in a forest, too??? What is wrong with us?!?!?!?

Berean Wife said...

Kelli,

Sorry, to hear that the weather was so bad in your area. We had nothing but the sirens going off in the middle of the night. When I had listened to the news they had only mentioned B'ham damage (typical) but not anything about up your way. We rarely hear about anything but what is happening in B'ham. :(

We have had softball-sized hail before! That is very, very bad. Two years ago, we were driving to church and it started hailing. I tried to find shelter (would have pulled into someone's carport!) but couldn't. I pulled to the woods as close to trees as I could and we sat and prayed very loudly. I made the kids get in the middle of the new van away from windows. We ended up with dents but not a broken window.

When we arrived back home, three hours later, that night we were amazed. We still had hail all over the yard and it smelled like pine everywhere from the pine limbs down. Large amounts of hail also creates a very strange fog type that looks like a fog machine has been running. We had a ruined garden, broken window, damaged trees, chimney damage, and holes all in the roof. Plastic children’s toys were shattered, even bicycle helmets.

I hope that was my storm of my lifetime.

I'm glad to hear that you and your family didn't have too much damage, although any damage can be stressful.

Berean Wife

Kelli said...

That sounds awful!!! I hope you never have to see a storm like that again!
I really used to like Birmingham news. Then we moved out here and learned that Huntsville reports local stuff.
We were fortunate not to have any serious damage. We are surrounded by huge trees, not one fell.