Wild Weather - part deux

Another night of wild weather in Savannah! Following the storm systems that hit Atlanta yesterday, we were ready for the possibility that they might be headed our way. For most of the day it looked like they would miss us to the north but we still kept getting severe storm warnings for most of the evening. Then, at about 10 pm, our power went out. We had our candles and flashlights ready but fully expected the power to come back on fairly quickly, as it usually does. But the minutes and hours ticked by and all that happened was a spectacular light show and an increase in wind. The lightening was pretty much constant which was fun to watch. The wind was eerie, however, since it is hardly ever windy at all here.

At a little after midnight we could hear sirens in the distance and figured that those were the tornado sirens so we got into our closet (the only room in the house with all interior walls). Wilbur was not happy with this arrangement, but eventually decided to lay right on top of Brett's shoes. We called Mom to see if she could look online and see if there were any weather service warnings...and sure enough, a tornado had been spotted in Effingham county which is probably less than 5 miles away. Luckily the storm was fast moving and by 1 am there wasn't any danger. Our power came on a little after 2 am.

This morning we found out that the power outage had affected the entire city and was a result of a tornado hitting one of the major power stations in Effingham county. Additionally, the news is reporting at least 12 homes damaged or destroyed. Meanwhile, all the St. Patrick's Day celebrations had to be shut down after it was evident that the power would not be coming back on any time soon. Imagine 100,000 drunk partiers having to be funneled out of little downtown Savannah - I'm so glad we weren't down there!!

The strangest part was when we actually heard the warning sirens since neither one of us has every heard them before and you know that when you hear them, there is actually a tornado nearby - not just a warning or a watch. We were really kicking ourselves that we never bought a weather radio - something we will definitely need to get! But, all's well that ends well. Today the sun is shining and it is going to be 80 degrees. What a change from last night!