Wild Weather!

Most of you know or have heard...we had tornadoes here in Arkansas on Thursday night. Since we love our TiVo, we hardly EVER watch live TV. So, Thursday night, while watching the recorded CSI, I kept hearing something, but thought it was was on the TV. Then a little later, Betty said, "What IS that sound?" So, we paused the TV, and guess what? It was the TORNADO sirens!!! OK, it's time to turn on live TV and see if we're about to be blown away. And we were. The tornado was on the ground in Benton/Bryant, just south of us.

The sirens finally stopped and it got really quiet outside. Not a good sign. Then they started saying that it was near the North Little Rock airport. That is less than a mile north of our apartment. So what did we do? Nothing. We didn't wake the girls or anything (they slept through the entire storm!). We did discuss where we would go...in the hall bathroom. We were amazingly calm. And as soon as it started, the storm passed and was gone. Well, that storm was gone, there was another one behind it. But this one, as the weather people said, "Is NOT a tornado producing storm." The bad news now...the tornado storm was heading straight towards Cabot!!!

Cabot...is where our new house is being built. Around 12:30am, we finally head to bed. We wake up to hear that some schools are closed because of power outages. Rachel's school was open, so after taking her, we drive to Cabot to see if our house is still standing. Here are some photos of around Sherwood. We saw lots of destruction on our way to school. The North Little Rock airport was destroyed. It's an airport primarily for small, personal owned aircraft. Most all of the small airplanes were scattered ALL over the airport. And the hangers were mostly destroyed. Here are some pictures of the street that runs beside the airport.
After dropping off Rachel, we headed to Cabot. We were so relieved to find our new house still standing, all windows still intact, all shingles still attached to the roof! Here is the photo of our house.
But Cabot did get hit hard. All of their schools were closed because there was no power. The high school had a lot of trees down around it. There were several roads we couldn't even get down because the police had them barricaded. Here are some photos I took while driving around in Cabot. I am not sure what this mangled mess of metal is, but it was on top of at least 10 cars that I could see!! Sorry for the poor image quality, it was taken through a wet windshield while we were moving!
Sheets of metal hanging in the trees like Christmas ornaments!
The street entering one of the areas that was closed off by the police.
I don't know if you can see it or not, but the left side of this house WAS their carport. Two large trees are now on top of it. You can barely see their two cars underneath the mess!
A company missing most of it's roof, which was probably scattered all over Cabot.
An example of why there is no power in Cabot!
Another mangled mess of something!
And now, for the best photo of all. The true sign that a tornado has been through your area:
Yes folks, that is a trampoline, wrapped around a telephone pole. And it was completely, tightly wrapped around it. I was one of about twenty other people there getting pictures of it. It was truly amazing. Hope you enjoy the photos and thanks to everyone who checked on us to make sure we were safe.