Is everyone ok? Just heavy rains here.
BB
Bad Storms Last Night
Hi BB,
Just thunderstorms here too.
GGG lives in Atlanta so I hope she is okay.
I hope everyone is safe and sound!
Danita
Big boomer rocked the whole house at about 6 AM. Nothing else of note. Pics of CNN center and hotel sure are scarey though.
We just returned from a fun run race at my sons school. I couldn't believe the pictures of downtown when I got up this morning.. Scary! I have a crazy fear of tornadoes and always say a prayer when there is an alert in the area.. Guess I slept right through that one.
We are supposed to have my sons baseball game this evening, but looks like it might get rained out..
I'll be the first on the GA forum to say it... I know we asked for rain, but gee, I haven't got a chance to weed or seed at all before it rains again every weekend.. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice right?? Maybe then..
Susan
Hi Susan! :)
It's a great time to do some weeding though. I had some stubborn young pine trees growing in a bed. This morning all it took was a gentle tug and they popped right out of the soil!
Mrs Bronx did a lot of weeding this morning. It was great having the greenhouse to work in. Got a lot of stuff started despite the weather.
I was afraid it might have blown away. Did know about the storms until I woke up this moning
BB
we've been lucky, had some serious thunder around 7 am . Light rain so far other than that, keeping an eye on the radar all morning though, I survived some serious tornadoes back in the 70's in Athens, I think we had 8 or 10 tornadoes that spring. Dont care to do that again.
We're good here. A tree fell in the woods next door at 2:30 am. Missed us (for a change). In the past eight years we've been hit by a tornado and a tree fell on the house in a separate incident here in Atlanta. We were hit by a hurricane and had some property damage from a neighbor's out of control fire up in White County.
Heavy rains here too. Stiff wind blowing but not tornado-style! Funny enough I had to check my backyard and side driveway this morning (in rubber boots and pyjama!) to check the condintion and had to cancel all yard work. With all this drought hard to believe that for last month or so we had to cancel some yard work because of too muddy conditions!
Wind is picking up again big time here, I'm afraid we're not done yet. Be careful everybody!
We lost almost every single tree on our wooded property last night but NO damage to houses or cars here. Incredible. The house across the street, the store at the corner and three houses less than a block away are flattened or damaged beyond repair.
It is truely incredible. You may have seen pictures of Cabbagetown, which is horrendous but they didn't cover East Atlanta much on the news. I lost 20 century (or close to it) hardwoods, the neighbor lost 5, the folks behind him lost 2 which were bigger than any of mine.
Our power lines were snapped, the poles were snapped in two..however forestry crews and power contractors were amazing and really came and showed this street some love today!! They were able to clear 5 GIANT trees out of the road, and get the power lines up in 10 hours. Our tree guys have cleared half of our property but had to leave because the loss of trees and root balls meant that in the rains today we flooded really, really badly on our property. I don't know what we are going to do about that.
I hope insurance is planning on covering all this. The tree damage was ASTOUNDING and very, very, very, very expensive!!
GGG
I'm glad you and your family are ok. Sorry about the trees though
BB
Oh my gosh G! I had no idea your area was hit like that... I guess you ARE close to the pics I saw of downtown. Those trees were magnificent. So sorry you lost them :( Most importantly, you are all okay and glad you have power!!
:)
Susan
My goodness, I'm so sorry to hear about all those fallen trees. So glad and thankful y'all weren't hurt, GGG.
GGG, I am so sorry and can empathize. We were hit, while asleep, eight years ago this April. I jumped out of bed as our French doors blew open. The wind dumped what looked like a blenderized jungle on me (it stank). I had plant garbage hanging out of my hair! Had no power for five days and could not drive in or out on our street for four days. Took eighteen months to clean up and restore our lot, house, garage and driveway. What had been two acres of woods had to be partially cleared, graded and tons of soil brought in to replace the giant holes in the earth where our hardwoods once stood. We lost seven beautiful hickorys as well as oak and pine. What was so weird was that while part of our outdoor furniture was recovered hundreds of feet from the house, plants sitting on deck rails a short distance away were unscathed! I still get shudders thinking about it. We head for the basement as soon as we hear anything is brewing. Thank goodness you are all safe.
MaypopLaurel, you sound like you had it worse than us because our windows stayed intact. But I know that STINK.
I'm worried about insurance. We can't afford the trees taken down if they don't insure us and we've already had half of them cleaned up. The roofter came today but we made a good cash deal. Now we have messed up electrical in the car and the house. I don't know what will happen with that because there is no physical damage. But we had no electrical damage before that!
The fence is a mess and someone said they probably wouldn't pay to replace that. The guy across the street had his house flattened and the same insurance as ours and he is VERY VERY VERY angry at them. The news is supposed to cover this area today because nobody has reported it at all. Have you seen cabbagetown on the news? We are WORSE than that. My lot is way worse for tree damage than anywhere else.
Here is someone's flicker set. Page 5 last photo and page 6 are mostly our houses. This is only the front (you can see the garden of the purple house unscathed!) the fellow who took these was afraid to go in the back yard so I don't have any photos on the internet yet of our back yard. Our homes are the pink and purple ones. The yellow house in half is the house across the street from us! THEY SURVIVED if you can believe it! Three more houses with that amount of damage just around the corner. All the black roof you see is the corner store at the top of the street. They lost their entire roof and are just waiting to see if the store is condemned or not.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/extraface/2335861574/
GGG
I am having trouble with the techno part of your post, but want you to know that we will jump om this. We would like to help you for sure as we know how painful this experience is. Our insurance company paid something like $50 per tree and the cost then was $1,500. We had over $85,000 in damages to our house. The best insurance will never give you 100% recovery.
Steve has a massive chainsaw and, although he will not risk his life climbing, he is volunteering time and tools to help in your cleanup. I will help too. Your fence probably will not be covered as most policies read that it must be attached or considered adjunct to the house. If you need fence for privacy or animals, we would like to help ASAP as all I can think of is how horrific it was when we has this experience. If there is some yard cleanup or something else...well it could be a nice way to meet another DGer. Please DMail
Maypoplaurel, thank-you SO MUCH! You are so super kind.
Our tree service has already cleaned up most of one of our properties (as we have two ajoining), the rest tomorrow. The trees can't be cut with a chain saw by a normal human. I mean I don't even know how these guys are getting thru them. 10' or much more in diameter! Our policy says $500 a tree and the total is $14,000 for removal total for the property. There were a LOT of BIG trees, and a huge crew. Thank-you about the fence. We'll see what they offer (or not) when the insurance people get here. We have also asked our insurance rep. who we've been with for 10 years to please come look at the damages in person in case he can be of any help. I will d-mail you as soon as I know what is going to happen. Hopefully insurance guy comes tomorrow or the next day. However, he may be very busy. Our fence is less for privacy or animals, it is more to disuade people from entering our property. Just to make it one more obstacle - our community is one of transition and sometimes people tend to take stuff or break into houses. The fence is just one more barrier to get through!
GGG
Dear friends in the Atlanta area, I am feeling your pain. Our area suffered a tornado last year and it seems to take forever to recover, but you will get there. My prayers are with you all! We were spared any major damage this time, thank goodness, but there was lots of damage east of us. Hope everyone is okay!
Susan
ohhhhhhhhhhhhh my gosh.. I just looked at the flicker pics and I'm so glad you are alright!! That is truely terrible Glynis.. I'm so sorry.. I really hope your insurance compnay comes through for you.
Are you doing okay ?? I hope so!! :)
Susan
This week I have seen unbelievable damage from SC to North GA. Rural Jefferson County GA was hit really hard, as well as Aiken and Barnwell Counties of SC. The homes and property damaged are one thing, thank the dear Lord that more bodies were not hurt. But what has depressed me more than anything as I drive around documenting damage, is the uprooted pecan trees. Entire orchards destroyed. I guess because pecan trees are my absolute favorite tree, they are so graceful and beautiful even in the dead of winter. I also love pecans! Hope all are well and recovering out there, I can't wait to get home, I've seen too much destruction this week.
Glad you guys are recovering GGG. My dairy guy lost his entire house and over 18 hundred year old oaks up north in Rockmart, and I didn't see a thing on the news about it :/ Sometimes I feel like 'downtown' is all that matters to the news - the rest of us live in the state too darn it!
We had no damage; just lost calories running up and down the stairs when the sirens would go off for bad weather :)
I'm glad everyone else is safe, and sad about property loss, but...at least you guys are OKAY!!
Our electrician lives in Woodstock and says his friends just outside of Woodstock got slammed too. Poor dairy guy.
Don't feel bad about Rockmart getting ignored. It took quite a few days for East Atlanta to be mentioned that it was hit by a tornado. Your county has already been offered National Disaster aide. Ours has not. It isn't a lot of people here that are low income and uninsured, but a few. , I haven't been able to generate enough cash to fix their places yet - I mean quite a bit, but only enough to cover one home. I dunno what they are gonna do here if the cash doesn't come through.
Vine City is finally getting some attention and some aide. That was hit very hard and most people are low-income and have already been hit by a flood and other damages to their homes in the last year.
GGG
Thanks for the report Guardian.
Farmers have really taken a hit in this state over the last year. From the Easter frost to the drought and now this. The terrible thing is that there doesn't seem to be much financial aid available for folks. What aid the government give is usually in the form of loans which I understand many farmers are loathe to take on. Last year after the frost, a local public radio station had some interviews with peach and blueberry farmers in the state. Most didn't have crop insurance and loans were out of the question so they just wrote the year off. It was absolutely heartbreaking.
Hineni:
You guys have sirens. I don't know if they do or not here in Lawrenceville. I guess I should find out!.
Where do you go to be safe if your house is on a slab?
BB
You folks are making me very nervous about our house in N. GA.. Has anybody heard anything about White County/Cleveland? We'll be up on Sunday to start planning the gardens. Hopefully White County is OK. Won't be the first time we have had to hike in, get the chainsaw, and saw our way in. Showing my age but...BUMMER!
This is just a few of the trees I saw. I didn't visit any of these folks, they just happened to be between points A & B on my route, but it broke my heart to see this. I have traveled this particular route for years and always loved the pecan orchards, no matter the season. Their silhouette in winter inspires me for some reason. I guess they have good "bones". LOL. I know - I'm weird.
Just got this in an email...
As an EF-2 tornado swept across downtown Atlanta, one local photographer snapped the shot of a lifetime.
Shane Durrance was on top of his condominium off Howell Mill Road when he saw the potential for a great photo of the downtown area. He took the photo just as 11Alive's Paul Ossmann was talking about tornado warnings in Atlanta.
Durrance, who is an acquaintance of Ossmann's, sent the photo to 11Alive and said he believed he'd missed catching the tornado on film. But after Ossmann reviewed the picture, he assured Durrance that he had indeed gotten the shot.
The picture shows a light-gray vertical strip of what looks like clouds connecting the cityscape to the larger clouds above. That is the actual tornado. Ossmann said it didn't look like the usual sort of funnel cloud because it was embedded in rainshowers at the time of the photograph.
Susan
Isn't that freaky photo? It looks to me like the tornado is just tearing up Cabbagetown at the time this picture was taken.
I thought we were getting hail then, but it really was just Cabbagetown being flung against my windows.
There are bedsheets in trees in our neighborhood that came from Cabbagetown which is about a mile and a half away! I have roof from one of the storage buildings on Memorial in my yard!
It IS a spookey pic.
Be glad your homes are standing, even if your trees aren't.
:)
Susan
Wow Susan...what a picture! I'm in N. GA now and everything is fine at our place and surrounds. Weird weather though...as we left the local seed and feed we noticed people looking up at the sky. It was snowing in Cornelia!!! We're going down to twenty six tonight. Did manage to get in a quick tilling yesterday afternoon. The pile of saved and carry over seed is looking scarey and I'm running out of excuses.
Laurel