Tuesday, January 03, 2006

10:22 PM Tuesday January 3, 2006

It is Tuesday evening and as I write this we are safe and sound in Manchester Tennessee. Our drive today from Forsyth Georgia was uneventful unlike our experience last night. All I can say is … WOW!

Monday night, January 2nd, we were settled into the motorhome for the evening and watching the local news on TV. The meteorologists were tracking a severe storm moving west to east across central Georgia and warning people in the path about tornados. Our little town of Forsyth was just south of the main storm cells and we felt pretty safe until … the tornado siren went off. Now, that is a sound that raises the hair on your neck. I went outside to keep an eye on the sky around our RV Park while Phil put our datastorm dish down. Since we didn’t exactly know what to do, we jumped into the Ranger and went up the hill to the office. They suggested we go wait it out in the restrooms building built from cement blocks if we were frightened. Everyone assured us this was not a common occurrence but they all seemed fairly nonchalant about the whole thing. We decided to stay in the office because the siren had stopped and we all watched in wonder as the rain began to pour down, then it hailed and rained harder. It was like a river falling from the sky. Lightning was flashing all around us and the thunder was so loud it sounded like cannons going off around us. The hail was mothball size but the rain was so heavy they were dissolving quickly in all that water. The storm was traveling at least 25 miles an hour and moving fast so within an hour or so, the worst was over.

It might sound crazy to say it was exciting but admittedly, pretty scary at the same time. When the worst was over and we went out to the truck to go back down to the motorhome, the water in the driveway was over the top of my shoes. It was still raining pretty hard but within a half hour or so the storm had passed over us completely and everything quieted down. This morning the sky was clear with fluffy white clouds! Sorry, didn't get any pictures ;-)

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