We had terrible tornadoes in Alabama today and I have spent the afternoon covering that story for the newspapers I work for....

First tho we checked on our farm and it was untouched, then found our son and his wife at work, then checked on their house and it was untouched....but son's in-laws beautiful dream house about 10 miles up the road from us was totally destroyed...they hid in a closset and walked away without a scratch but their house is leveled...

our town's airport is also hard hit....

I have heard some remarkable stories of escapes this afternoon...but there are 6 from my county (Blount) and at least 15 from the neighboring county (west Etowah where son lives) that are injured and in area hospitals right now....

taking these photos and interviewing these photos have been tough today....I am going to check on all my animals now and do a lot of animal petting to calm my nerves! please pray for the injured and those who've lost their homes....and some who lost their businesses!

plus my cousin in south Alabama was in the Radio Shack she works at and the roof and front windows blew off it while she was in it! But she is o.k. what a day...l

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), November 24, 2001

Answers

seems like BAMA gets tornados once a week

-- stan (sopal@net-port.com), November 24, 2001.

Glad you and yours came through safely Suzy....... hugs and prayers for you. We just went through it a few weeks ago and it is sure terrifying!!!

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), November 24, 2001.

Hello Suzy, Those storms (two) passed near us, but fortunately they did not do us any harm. We had lots of needed rain and the wind was heavy at times but, did not damage anything. Just south of us, (across the border in Arkansas) I heard six people were killed from a tornado. I am glad that you made it through the storms safe! Sincerely, Ernest

-- http://communities.msn.com/livingoffthelandintheozarks (espresso42@hotmail.com), November 24, 2001.

Suzy, those tornados came through here first (just north of you). I was in a fabric store and heard what was coming, looked outside and could not see a thing. Embarrassed my kids because I shoved some things out from under a table and got my family underneath until the storm died down. I don't take chances with tornados--don't care who laughed. My daughter said, "won't we get in trouble for moving all these boxes?" I said, "honey, I don't know why everyone else isn't doing this and no, don't worry, mommy will take care of everything."

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), November 24, 2001.

Suzy, thanks for posting that you're all well. I was watching the weather channel reporting on the storms, and I was saying a prayer for all of you. At one time they showed at least 7 tornadoes on the map. They also said that the tornadoes were hard to spot in some areas because of all the hard rain, something like being "rain wrapped", so Ann, I think I would have been under the table too!!! Glad to hear you are all alright.

-- Annie (mistletoe@kconline.com), November 24, 2001.

It skirted us....we are just above the Alabama border...although we did sit in the storm shelter for a while when it was headed for Fayetteville. WHEW!!!

-- Jason in S. Tenn. (AJAMA5@netscape.net), November 24, 2001.

My goaties alerted me to a change in the weather becuase they were relly hungry yesterday. They are well fed anyways, but over the years with our goats and cows we have come to notice that when they eat like heck it means a storm is coming. I hadn't heard much about the change in weather yesterday for here i northern AR so i didn't know it til last night when hubby was watching the news around 6PM. It didn't take a rocket scientis to see that a storm was on the way.

There were tornadoe watches posted first then that changed to a warning. I have this nifty little weather bug that i downloaded form our internet provider called the weather bug. Whenever storms or bad weather is on the way it chirps like a bug. Well.... I wa sonline last night and it began chirpping. I clicked it on and read we had a tornadoe warning for northern AR with high winds. Up to 80 miles an hr. Well... the wind picke dup, gusting a lot on top of our mountain here. It got worse and some of the plants, decons bench, etc that were on the front porch got blown away. The decons bench was a 20.00 plastic one from the dollar store, it ended up way out past the buck pasture, all that wa sleft was part of the back where it had hit the porch beam and broke, pretty strong winds, have to remember to anchor things down. But then again i wa sthinking that if I put Santa on the roof for Christmas decorations he just might get a head start. LOL:)

then the rain came and the awful lightening, the radio said to take immediate cover, that was scary to me especially at this time of yr, its usually quiet. We decided to wait and see before w ewent o the basement, i figured I would go out to the barn with the girls cause I love them so and wasn't going to let them ge thurt. The wind wa sawful and we were really close to the tornado, it went about 20 miles southwest of us.

I haven't heard the reports today about damages, but the tv said in AR 5 people died.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), November 25, 2001.

Whew! I'm glad to hear all of you are ok--we had a small one here in May, which leveled the highschool, pretty much, and it scared the dickens out of me. Can only imagine how all of you managed through today. Stay safe! Jan

-- Jan in CO (Janice12@aol.com), November 25, 2001.

Very glad that no one in your family was hurt. Also sorry to hear that your son-in-law's house was destroyed. Having been through a tornado and lost everything, I can sure empathize with you. We are sitting over here in West Ga. close to the Alabama line and whenever the wind blows, I get nervous, like last night. The wind blew and it rained and then we saw the tornado watch boxes come on the TV. One thing I am going to do is add a tornado shelter to my property, even if the house goes, at least we'll be safe.

Best regards always,

-- Cindy (colawson@mindspring.com), November 25, 2001.