Tornado 2012

March 2, 2012 was such a wild day around my area. We had potential strong storms Wednesday February, 29 but it wasn't anything to worry over. I knew we were in for strong storms today but I still did not think anything would come of it. I saw on Facebook that morning from a local news station that was advising everybody to make sure their cell phones stayed plugged in throughout the day so they would be charged and to make sure weather radios were charged and you had batteries. I knew from that post that we definitely had potential tornadoes coming our way. They predicted around 4 p.m. to be the worst so I took their word...they were wrong (not at all downing the weather people, I fully rely on them and think they do a great job). Maddy's daycare director sent an email stating the kids had a safe zone to go to in the event a tornado touched down and they had practiced a tornado drill first thing that morning. When I read that Maddy had gone through a tornado drill I'll be honest and admit I cried. My 2 year old should not have to be practicing for a tornado and even worse be practicing without her mommy there to protect her. I kept my eye on the clouds all day that day...I obviously could NOT focus at work. Here is the first picture I took outside:

Honestly it did not look bad at all so I was beginning to wonder if we really were in for bad storms. I kept my eyes glued to news channel 9's facebook page as well as the weather in motion map on weather.com. The new station finally posted a map that showed just what we were in for and I knew we were definitely in for some bad weather. Here is the map they posted:

I had a friend keeping me up to date in their section of the woods and they were reporting hail. Soon after I heard there was hail I received word that there was a tornado on signal mountain (which is near the downtown area of my town) and had jumped over to Red Bank, TN. It became real to me that tornadoes were on their way. I kept a close watch on our dogs. For the April 27, 2011 tornado outbreak all the dogs were going crazy. This time around my dog Manny was definitely shaking like a leaf, but he wasn't going crazy and neither were the outside dogs. The outside dogs were all in their house being quiet as a mouse, which I didn't understand. The rain finally hit my house and in my mind I was thinking ok...let's do this. This is what I saw out of my window:

I know..it looks just like a typical rainy day. I started hearing reports that there was a torndao on the ground in Harrison and then in Ooltewah. I guess I was in disbelief because I just refused to believe that was true. It wasn't until I saw pictures and heard people near the situation start talking about it on facebook that it became more real to me. Island Cove marina got destroyed and the pictures my friend Wendy posted were just unreal to me. When I think of tornadoes, I do not think of my town as having them. In school we were told not to worry about tornadoes because we live in a valley and tornadoes would just bounce off the mountain...now it's becoming more and more common it seems and it's just crazy. Finally close to 2:00 p.m. things started to ease off as far as warnings go and I began to wonder what 4 p.m. would bring. Roads were closed all over the place and it was taking people 2.5 hours just to get home. The exit I normally get  off of to go home was closed. Both roads you take on the way to my house were closed. Never has that happened that I can remember. The next round of storms were brewing and it was around 6:30 p.m. I took some more pics of the clouds just for my documentation purposes:

It really did look much worse than the pics show. It was funny because I'm all into seeing what was going to happen and is a tornado gonna fall from the sky and next thing I know this lightning that seemed to just be like a huge claw reaching down struck and I screamed and tried to take off running, but I forgot I was right next to my car and ran into it backwards tryin to get outta there lol. My mom and I stood in amazement at what it looked like outside and we both agreed that a tornado was definitely going to be forming from that storm. The rest of the night we hung out in my mom's room, which Maddy loves because of their awesome king size bed they have lol. Here she is:

She was munching on grapes and talking to her cousin Aria. They were so cute talking to each other. I have them on video but haven't uploaded it yet. I put Maddy to bed at regular time, 7:30 p.m., and then went back to work. By the time I was done with work at 10 p.m. the weather was starting to ease off. It was a very wild and crazy day and I truly feel so sorry to the people who lost their homes or were affected by this tornado. The tornado has been categorized an EF3 and started in Harrison, TN. We drove by on Saturday and I honestly didn't want people seeing me take pictures of the damage to their homes because I feel it is disrespectful unless they tell me they are ok with it. We drove through again Saturday night and I felt a little better about it because it wasn't obvious what I was doing. The road I am talking about is Mahan Gap. I travel this road every day at least two times a day, seven days a week. Never in my life have I seen a house completely taken from the foundation, partially twisted, and then looked as if it had just been sat back down. As my mom put it, it was like something you would see in the Wizard of Oz. I saw kids just sitting on parts of trees and my heart just broke for them. I cannot imagine what they must be feeling and I will definitely be praying for everybody. I will post the pics I have of the damage, but they are blurry as we were driving through: