We've been lucky here for a good many years, knock on wood, but you never know. These storms have affected a large swath of the country. I never owned a boat but I would think insurance would cover storm damage, that's probably the top reason for losses that there is. Oh well, they are probably rich and will get a new one no problem. Not to be ignorant but if you can afford those you probably have several homes in different countries etc. If Forrest gump is any clue to how Alabama really is, it looks really nice there, all the southern Gulf coast is beautiful, there is just the storms that spoil it from being perfect. I've never seen Tennessee yet. Well, I hope for the best to everybody.

Thank you all for the well wishes. This working nights gets in the way of a lot of things, and that was the delay in my checking in...That and a new system and a secretary who decided to take off, so I had a brand new system I had to work with (which I actually kind of liked when I got used to it) and I had to do the secretaries job as well as mine to do. I had no spare time for quite a while there. Eighteen years is long enough to work nights. Rita, I've always lived where there was a tornado "season". The closest I have actually been to one was one block...Plenty close enough. Friday night there were three people killed by the storm that had passed south of to us...It did only tree and power line damage here (I wish it had blown a few more limbs out of the big oak tree in back). The town where it hit is only 50 miles from us. Another one hit in Tuscaloosa which is much closer, so it was not a good night, but we were truly blessed. kay

I am going out now to see if we sustained any wind damage. We didn't get a tornado, but the wind was a might fierce for a few minutes as the super cell passed by us. Only a little hail and it was very, very small. Hit the ground and melted immediately. We lost power and it was out for about three hours. I cannot describe the utter silence. Not a sound from nature or man of any kind. Eerie silence for hours. No wind - nothing. We lit our candles and sat eating supper by candle light. :) DH finally called the Electric Co-op on his cell to let them know that our area's power was a total black out, and as he was talking to them, the power came back on. That was kind of funny. We both chuckled and he said, "Well....uh, never mind! The power just came on! Sorry to have bothered you. Thank you." They are a very good company. Always very fast at repairs and extremely courteous too. Anyway, I can't see any damage out the windows - not any leaves laying about the yard. Once again, this ridge seemed to protect us. It skipped by us and started up again east of here and went on towards Tulsa in a northeasterly pattern. The National Weather Center issued a Tornado Warning for our area, which mean take cover immediately. I got things ready in the basement. Was waiting for DH to make it home from work up in Catoosa, north of Tulsa, about 2 hours away. Just before the storm came over last night, I went out on the front porch, looking up at the clouds to see if I could spot any circulation or funnel clouds, when I heard the sirens going off down the ridge in town. I could barely hear them, but I did. Then Mother called to tell me they were sounding them and that they were going to the neighbor's cellar. There were Tornadoes all over the state again, but this time they were going in three different directions! Two or more separate storm systems were moving through the state and the fear was that they would merge. Sheesh! We don't get Tulsa TV channels down here, so have no idea how they fared, but on the radio I could hear they were getting hit pretty hard last night. Anyway, I hope all you other Okies are alright today. Please post and let us know that you're okay. ((HUGS)) ~Annie

We are fine. We had some storms on the radar that were SW of us in TX and looking a little scary so we put deer netting over hoops over the tomato and onion beds for hail protection. I don't know how much hail the storms produced, but once when I was checking the radar I saw what looked like a hail core. We could see horrible clouds slightly south of us and could hear thunder on and off for 2 hours, but so far the storms have stated south of the Red River. Our worst weather here, in terms of severity, almost always comes at us from our SW. As I was watching the radar, stopping to check it about every 15 minutes, it looked like we had a tall wall(The Great Wall of Oklahoma?) at the Red River that was making storms just melt away. I'm okay with that! : ) Larry, Thanks. I hope y'all are okay tonight. I got in such a habit of posting these when Diane lived in LeFlore County and the hills around her kept her family's weather radio from receiving the warnings. Now, I just think that it is a good idea to post them in case someone else is outside like I was, and comes inside and sees the Tornado Warning and says "Oh, crap, I didn't know this was happening". Actually my first clue that a watch had been issued was a text message from our county's Emergency Mgmt Director. He's really good about sending us the weather watch and warning news as soon as he gets that info himself. Dr. Forbes has some TorCon numbers posted for our region for later in the week, and I'll be watching those as the most serious weather days approach. Dawn