Storms, storms, and more storms!!!

A record breaking 24 hours in Georgia! It all started Friday evening....

I was settled in at the CCA house cropping away when someone says to turn the tv on because there has been damage to the Georgia Dome. Turns out that an EF2 tornado went through downtown Atlanta,damaging the Dome, the CNN center, surrounding hotels and so much more. This happened during overtime of the SEC basketball games that were being held at the dome.... had overtime not happened thousands of people would be out on those streets when the tornado struck!

So we continued our crop weekend and apparently a storm hit our location about 5am that shook the house. I slept right threw it but others were up and on 'storm watch' and ready to get everyone else up if necessary. (thanks Lisa!)

Sometime around 11am we turned the tv back on and we see a whole line of storms coming across the Atlanta Metro area. At the time the worst storms were west of my house in Cartersville. There was rotation and a tornado was reported to have touched down in Polk county as the storms moved east. I called home and dh had taken the kids to Chick-fil-a for lunch and then headed to his parents house in downtown Cartersville. At the time they had left the house the weather was fine.

Needless to say I did not get any scrapping done in the next hour as I sat stressing and shaking while watching the tornadic cell move along the road that my neighborhood is on and heading straight for downtown Cartersville. Thankfully the tornadic action in the cells weakened as it moved east and to my knowledge there were no tornados that touched down in Cartersville.

I spoke to hubby and he, the kids and the rest of the family were fine. However there was severe weather (tornado?) just west of our neighborhood. Hubby found out that there was no power at our house so he headed back to pack up some things and the kids were going to spend the night at my mom's since we had no idea how long the power was going to be out. It was harder than expected to get back to our house, there were power line down and a mess just past our neighborhood. Police had a detour but people were trying to sneak past the cops by going through our neighborhood so the police would not let hubby on the street to our house. After much pleading and speaking to 2 officers he was let in to get to the house. In the meantime I was still at CCA trying to calm down after knowing that everyone was ok and that our house was still standing.

By now we realized that a very strong storm was heading towards the CCA house, picture 12 ladies worried that all their scrapbook papers and photos may be swept away in a tornado.... we grabbed pillows and purses, scoped out the best hallway and closet and stood watch ready to take cover.

Then someone yelled 'It's coming!' We all jumped up and grabbed out pillows thinking she has seen a twister outside.... turned out she just saw the winds and black clouds and meant that the storm was coming in our direction. So more watching and waiting... the worst went north of us, we did get some hail but no damage.

By dinner time all severe weather had moved out of the Atlanta area. The severe weather that hit near my house caused major damage to a few houses just a few miles from us and the covered picnic area and a brand new playground at daughter's school seems to be comnpletely ruined. There were no more police detours when I got home this afternoon so clean up has started quickly.

Amazingly only 2 people were killed in all these storms across Georgia. My heart goes out to their families.

A big thanks goes to WSB-2 for the detailed up-to-time coverage of all the storms.

Here is a clip from FOX that shows the damage near our house in Bartow County.
News clip

With all that said, it was an AWESOME weekend with the girls! I got over 20 pages completed and I finished my Summer Vacation trip to NY in 2006!! It was such a wonderful creative weekend, gotta love sharing ideas, supplies and being inspired by each other. So many beautiful pages and projects were made!

And by the way...
Happy St. Patricks Day!