Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

[dixiehack]

Either this was the briefest of touchdowns or more likely it gets clashified as a microburst. There just isn't a consistent damage track to speak of. From skirting along the edge of the trailer community you can tell they are damaged but I didn't see anything leveled. Some trees down at the intermediate school and a ServPro van out front but no structural damage visible. The back road to the Baptist church is barricaded, but I only caught the faintest whiff of pine driving by.

The only real damage I saw up by the interstate near Walmart was an RV dealership that took a pretty good beating. In the truth in advertising department, one of those RVs got blown into the wall of the neighboring business, Joe Hudson Collision Center.

 

[Neutral Corner]

I drove past the Super-Walmart in out neighborhood yesterday. I counted 22 bucket trucks parked, waiting for the storm to come in.

 

[dixiehack]

I did notice this evening that the National Guard armory just north of the trailer park (and thus a block closer to yours truly) got a sizable part of the roof peeled off. It did wind up rating as an EF1. Plenty scary enough for me.

 

[SixToe]

Back 33 or 34 years ago, I can't remember when, Auburn played MSU in Starkville and Ms. SixToe and I were driving over. Noticed a huge cloud, blackness, lightning, ugliness. No radio reports of anything.

We got to the hotel in Columbus — I think it was the Holiday Inn, by the mall. Parked the shipty car I was driving at the time and said, "You go in and check in, and I'll bring in the bags." Literally, it started hailing like a MFer right then and then the wind started blowing. We couldn't get out because of the hail, and the wind intensified, and we huddled in my shipty car probably chanting and praying to every higher power. I could feel my car lifting and rocking, then slamming. It did this several times and then, just like Keyser Söze ... poof. It was gone.

Everything was white from the hail. The 18-wheeler in the mall's empty parking lot was tumbled over. The hotel was, I think, an "L" shape and the roof on the front was sheared away. Power out, Mississippi University for Women campus damaged, other damage. My shipty car was dented all over. Amazingly, we were unharmed. Ms. SixToe stayed at the hotel and listened to the game on the radio, and I went on to Starkville.

I've waited out, watched or, only a couple of times, been involved in tornadic storms since 1974. They're incredibly amazing, and damned scary.