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.