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bacpacker
04-30-2011, 04:35 AM
Had 2 bad storms this week. Monday had real heavy rain and lightning, knocked the power out for 4-5 hours. No damage other than some washing out across the garen.

Wed. night turned out to be a little different. I was driving hard to beat a storm home when leaving work. Storm had already generated a tornado warning. Got home with about 15 minutes to spare. That cell and the next 4 all went south of us about 5-10 miles (all the storms that night came up from what was hitting Alabama). We had a weather net running thru all these and folks wer reporting rain over 2" per hour, winds up to 60mph, and hail. Cell number 6 took a more northerly route when coming out of Chatanooga and heading toward us. About 7:45 we started getting the heaviest wind of the night, over 50mph and severe lightning. Within 2-3 minutes the rain had picked up to 2-3" per hour. At this point we went to the basement. No sooner did we get down there than the hail started. This went on for about 10 minutes. When it quit I opened the garage door and went out to look around and it was close to dark by this point. Right away I saw my car had been trashed, most all surfaces looked like a golf driving range opened up on it, the license plate and honda emblem was beaten off and laying on the concrete. The hail was all over the place and piled up against the house up to 4" deep. It ranged in size from pea size up to silver dollar size. Some of it was still on our deck the next morning. We had a creek running across our property where it's usually dry and a 2' deep pond next to my neighbors driveway.

The storm cells kept rolling thru till about midnight and we had to go back to the basement twice more. We finally went to bed around 1am, we had no power sice about 7pm. Power came back right before 8am and we got up to servey what happened. We went out on our deck first and found all our screen windows shreeded, looked like cats had been climbing them. Our siding was busted up on 2 sides of the house, gutter bent and dented up, shingles broken and beaten. We had leaves and limbs all around the property that was beaten and blown off the trees. Our Blueberries were stripped, as was most of our new fruit trees. Our grape vines were torn off the arbors and bare. Went back to the garden and every thing we had up was gone or torn up. The only things that might make it is our onions and mabe the cabbage which was somewhat protected by some trees planted close by. My wheat was beaten down and I doubt I'll get much of anything from it.

I guess the morale of the story, were alive, just mades me think I need to find a better way to grow my food more protected. I've got time to replant if I can find some plants. I had started most of the stuff from seed.

Prayers for all the folks who have lost so much more than we did from these storms.

ak474u
05-01-2011, 03:04 AM
kinda hits home with crop damage in a time when we can't afford it i.e. post shtf/collapse whatever. I think I'd want to have a year of food in RESERVE to combat the possibility of crop loss when there is no option to replace, or re-start growing of food out of necessity.

bacpacker
05-01-2011, 03:26 AM
Exactly. It sucks having all that work and money down the drain. However I went and bought more plants today. They'll go in the ground next week. All the fruit is history for this year and the wheat remains to be seen. The way food prices are going now it really sucks, just gotta work around it.

It does point out the fact that everyone needs food and seed for at least 2 years. What you plant this year may not make it, so do you have enough to get you thru till next years crops come in? Right now I don't. My plan was to put enough back this summer to fill that hole up. Luckily it's still early enough here to still get a decent harvest if something else don't happen.

izzyscout21
05-02-2011, 11:54 PM
My garden was ruined in addition to the inch and a half of water in the basement.

bacpacker
05-03-2011, 12:31 AM
Izzy, If you plan on replanting this year I recommend going over to foothills hardware soon. They have quite a few plants but when I was there Saturday gettin us some more, they were crowded and sales were brisk. They still had a decent selection then.

izzyscout21
05-03-2011, 01:00 AM
roger that. I'll try to head over before work tomorrow. My wife did get a good chuckle over me kneeling in the garden screaming "my zucchini...why? why?"

bacpacker
05-03-2011, 02:07 AM
LOL Same here over my 13 Blueberry plants. We spent a couple weekends working on them over the winter. They were hanging full, should have been our best harvest yet. Well should have been.

TEOTWAWKI13
05-19-2011, 09:36 PM
Glad you guys are alive! I was literally moving into our home in East Ridge Tn that night, 4/27. The tornado that ripped Ringgold, GA in half just missed us and my in-laws. And I was driving back to Bartow Co, GA and just missed one that came across the road at about mile marker 300, between Adairsville and Chatsworth areas. I was lucky. Others not so much.

bacpacker
05-19-2011, 11:32 PM
Glad you made it through TET. Hadn't heard from you in a while and wondered where you were.

The Stig
05-20-2011, 01:54 PM
Glad you guys are alive! I was literally moving into our home in East Ridge Tn that night, 4/27. The tornado that ripped Ringgold, GA in half just missed us and my in-laws. And I was driving back to Bartow Co, GA and just missed one that came across the road at about mile marker 300, between Adairsville and Chatsworth areas. I was lucky. Others not so much.

Glad to hear you made it out ok, One of my sales guys lives in Ringgold so I know it was ugly over that way.

Welcome back!

LUNCHBOX
05-31-2011, 09:43 PM
I just posted on another thread my concerns about the weather issues.....record tornados, floods/rains, unusually large thunderstorms in my area. I just wonder if summer will be any different or are we in for some type of extreme conditions for each season.

bacpacker
05-31-2011, 11:40 PM
Makes you wonder! We started the year pretty dry, then March thru early May we got a huge amount of rain, plus the storms 2 or 3 times including the one that hit Tuscalosa. Since then VERY DRY and this past weekend we've been up in the 90's. It's like late July or August way to early. The heat is suppose to be here for 10 days at least.

izzyscout21
06-01-2011, 03:08 PM
i really hope i don't have to continue taking the family to my parent's basement every other day. my kids are starting to think we live there.