Tornados. Lots and lots of tornados. It's like the outbreak in the 70's on Palm Sunday combined with the one in the mid 90's more in GA. One supercell started out near Philadelphia MS and was still killing people in NE GA, almost 450mi away. Smacked Tuscaloosa and Birmingham very hard, lots of friends I'm worried about all along that line. Hasn't even reached us yet, on the leading edge right now, but maybe it'll hit us late enough that there's not enough energy left to make it really hook up. Just heard the first heavy peals of thunder...

Good luck riding out all that mess down there Eddy. It's one of the things I DON'T miss about the SE US, plain mean weather. Mine's just cold.

Rough night. Was up til 3:30 this morning monitoring the weather. Our sister store in Madison took a glancing blow. Tore the big roll up doors off their frames and threw a bunch of parts in the floor. They're without power and phones, but other than that everything's fine. We dodged the bullet up my way. I still can't get in touch with some extended family in Ringgold.

Looking at some of the pictures, it boggles my mind at how seemingly surgically precise tornadoes can be...

Take care guys! Do most people have basements? I remember growing up in Florida the homes were made of blocks because there was no ability to dig basements with the water table so close.

Yea hang in there guys.....I'm blown away by some of the footage captured over the last couple days. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/patriot.gif" alt="" />

Everyone doing ok?

Mostly missed me to the north. I've heard from all family and most friends in Bama and all ok. One friend whose house was near the path of the long lived twister as it passed near Trussville AL is in Florida and has not reached neighbors or nearby friends yet and is on the way home to check, but is probably ok, too.

My family in west AL always had a storm shelter, in my grandfather's case, 6" poured concrete with rebar floor, walls, and roof, dug into a dirt bank with the roof level with the top of the bank, with a 1/4" steel door. 12v lighting system with the batteries on a charger, some durable food, bottled water, clothes, some tools, and that's where the pickles and canned stuff was stored anyway.

We've had as high as 12 packed in there, real friendly, and I watched the twister pass about half a mile away.

It's called tornado alley for a reason.

We were paged out around midnight to a small RV park in our district. One RV sized cabin had broken loose and rolled into another cabin. Everyone was ok. We had to cut out way back out.

We heard station 11 report - "It's all gone." When their station burned. They were able to get one apparatus out. Everything else was lost. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

We heard fireboat 10 fight a structure fire on Burton. With trees down, fireboat 10 was on their own.

We heard station 1 and 5 trying to cut their way up toward Black Mountain park in Mountain City.

At daybreak, Rabun SAR started sending out search teams. We had teams on Lake Burton and in Mountain City. Our search section of Burton was only accessible by boat. There was a lot of building debris in the lake.

We searched buildings that were completely demolished. I stood in what was the crawlspace of a building. The entire building had been picked up and tossed up hill. We had sunken boats. Pontoon boats upside down and others wrapped around trees. Swathes of trees broken off. Trees completely denuded of leaves. We had heavy propane odor in most locations. Had to uncover tanks to reach the shutoff valve. We had one body recovery in our search area. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Much thanks to Towns county, Habersham county, Oconee county SC, Hall county and others. We had help from all over. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

I'm headed down to Auburn, AL for an ECORS race this weekend; supposed to be nice weather.. we'll see what happens.

www.ecors.com

>>>*Out here in Oregon we complain about the rain, the fact that it is staying colder than normal, some silly mudslides.

Those videos from the areas hit by Tornados are beyond belief, all of us who come here have friends and good people we know that are affected.

Le' and I sent what we could through the American Red Cross, any of you that can afford it please kick in to any organization you prefer. Folks down there will need our help....*EB