The aftermath...

I guess we're all tired of hearing me talk about those devastating tornadoes, but when I drove to Rome this morning I passed an area that made my jaw drop, and as far as I know no tornado touched down here, just wind.  For about one-quarter mile along both sides of the highway there had to be at least 100 huge trees down, with damage to at least one home.  This is country, not town, so there were not a lot of houses to begin with.

We had a Traveler's insurance adjuster stop by to use our facilities this afternoon, and he's done nothing but drive for days now. He said that to the west of our store out the Alabama Highway, there was no power until the city of Gadsden and in some places it would probably be a month before power was restored.  Some of those big high-tension power transmission poles had gone down.  The wonderful little town of Cave Spring got a direct hit, but I didn't drive through to see. They don't need tourists rubbernecking right now.

I found this map online today, and it pretty much says it all.

Cave Spring is the little squiggle northwest of Atlanta.

And, since that map didn't show enough detail for me, I traveled the internet seeking other maps that would show this area better, and found this one.  Since I have to do 'print screen' to capture this, the quality isn't great, but it shows where we are.

You can see how the majority of the storms moved along a northeast line.  Cave Spring is the red squiggle just above Cedartown -- not 10 miles away!  Over in Alabama to the southeast of us, Jacksonville isn't all that far away and there was supposedly a tornado spotted on the ground east of Piedmont (near Jacksonville) headed directly for Cedartown.  I don't know how up-to-date these maps are, since NOAA can take time to survey damage in a particular area before determining that it was a tornado.  Doesn't matter.  Whatever you call them, it was bad.

However, no harm came to me or anyone in this area and we are all very grateful for that.  Some people still don't have electricity, but that's nothing but a minor inconvenience compared to what might have happened.  And, I guess we're still not out of the woods.  Another nasty front is supposed headed this way.  I sure hope Mother Nature gets over this little pissy spell soon!