April 26-28 2011 Storms In South

GPSilverado · April 29, 2011

The weather the last few days has been absolutely terrifying for a lot of regions of the country. I hope everyone in those areas came through as best they could. If there are members here who have been affected, please post here. Maybe some of us can help out somehow. I know the economy is tough, but labor is relatively free.

We were very lucky here in the upstate of SC. The storms tracked up the western side of the mountain range, and that protected us fairly well. I know people from the Bristol TN area, and they were hit extremely hard by hail, but in other areas like Washington County VA they had very bad damage as well as those through out Alabama and other various places. A local TV station flew over Rabun County GA and filmed for 20 minutes around the lake there. Pretty amazing at all the damage. That storm tracked about 30 miles west of us, just over the mountain range of the SC/NC border.

Here is a link to the raw video (no audio), the video around the lake (approx 4 minute mark onward) makes you realize the power of those winds.

http://www.wyff4.com/video/27702207/detail.html

God Bless all that were affected.

Badbird2000 · April 29, 2011

I live in Knoxville.. we had some hail, a few tornados... nothing major hit me directly. Small hail damage on the roof of my truck, but heck, i never see it, plus the truck is 9 years old.Hope veryone else is ok..

PiraticaL · April 29, 2011

I'm leaving this afternoon to go to northern Alabama/southern Tennessee to help some of my family with the clean up. A tree clipped my grandmothers house and had some trees go down at my aunt's who lives next door. They have the driveways and roads mostly clear to where you can actually get up to the houses now but still have a lot of debris to move. They're running power off 2 generators that some other family members brought in since they'll likely be without power for awhile. Down the road from there my uncle's sister lost her house completely. Everyone is alive but its a pretty big mess from what I hear.

sab316 · April 29, 2011

I live about 80 miles from Tuscaloosa and have some friends that live there but luckily they are all right. I lost power in my town for about 12 hours thursday night but that was from the tornado tearing a main power supply line and they had to shut down the plant to keep it from melting down. Smithville, MS is all but wiped off the face of the map. Don't think there is anything left standing. Luckily the tornado missed me at college and tracked north, on my way home today there were fields that you could see the path of destruction in. 150 aces of pine trees all snapped off about 20 feet in the air. One town in Mississippi has building debris and large dents on the TOP of the water tower. They also found a family picture from Mississippi 175 miles away in Alabama.

Between the storms and the Mississippi River about to jump its banks its going to be rough here in the south for a while. All you can do is rebuild.

AThomas7782 · May 1, 2011

I'm in Marion County, TN, and we were very fortunate to not have much damage, and never lost power. Everywhere, and I mean everywhere, around us has pretty bad conditions. I guess the hail damage on my tinfoil sheetmetal is a good thing compared to what others are going through.

PiraticaL · May 1, 2011

Jasper TN is where Im staying at right now but I have been going across the river to Bryant where my other grandmother and aunt live. They're over off of county road 91 in Alabama. They were on the outer edge of whatever came through there but if you go further up from them it gets much much worse. I went up to the top of the mountain and you can see the path that the tornado took through the valley. Im pretty sure whatever came through there is what hit Bridgeport and then moved up to where they are at.

mtiffinal · May 2, 2011

9 or 10 people I work with in northern alabama lost everything, no one was hurt thankfully. The plant I work at will be down for 3-6 weeks while all the 500kv power is restored. Besides Tuscaloosa, some of the other towns that were hit hard were Birmingham, Cullman, Tanner, Phil Campbell, and many others. I heard on the radio that one of the tornadoes was on the ground for 70 miles.