Painting - Message from mikejmerritt.....

Wanted to let Chipfo, Bobf and forum posters that my town was hit by tornado Friday afternoon(10 million damages so far) and I am without power and phones for 7 to 10 more days. Miss you all!!! Think of us!...Mike

Hate to hear that. I too am in tornado land, been concerned a couple of times but never have seen one, there has even been touchdowns in my town.

I hope all is well with you and your family and will be waiting for your return to the board :).

Thanks Chip! We now have phones, power but no TV cable yet. I can live with that. We have no injuries here at home and have no damage to house due to living on the base of a hill that allowed the most of the wind to miss us. I have never heard of such a storm that came through here. A system started on the Mississippi gulf coast and moved north east to Birmingham Alabama. That is almost 450 miles as the crow flies of 120 mile an hour straight line winds that spawned many tornados. The three worst hit counties in MS were mine(Lowndes) and two others. Of the areas hit in Lowndes I live in one the three worst hit blocks. We were very lucky because I and my 16 year old daughter were here. This thing picked up cars and over the road trucks, snapped 1000 telephone poles(so far), more trees than will ever be counted, leveled 55 homes, another 1000 homes have been cut in two by our huge pines some with as many as 15 trees, ripped the roof off of a Lowes and some 50 cars were crushed by falling trees with everyone getting out just in time that were in there cars. All of this in my county of 55,000 and happened in 5 minutes. WOW! Chip, excuse my off subject rambling but I feel like I have just re-entered the the world as we know it...Mike

Mike, that's s-c-a-r-y. Frankly, I was stunned and disheartened by your first message. I'm glad to hear that you and yours are O.K. and that your neighbors survived also. Welcome back!

I always hate hearing about communities being busted up like that, I am glad your alright, looks like all of you over there have a lot of work to do to get things back to normal, best wishes to you and yours :).

A few years ago in April, a tornado came within a mile of my house. One neighborhood that was hit was totally demolished. It hit while many people were sleeping. There were only two deaths - could have been much worse considering the time. One of those deaths was a heart attack after the storm passed.

Yes, it is quite scary!!!

I remember a couple of touchdowns in my town, no deaths but one was within a few yards of a nursing home about 1 1/2 miles from my house and the other was directly west of us in my girlfriends mobil home heading directly east according to the radio, useing an old Air Force base as a reference, just a couple miles away, we thought we were going to get it but it never got that far thank God, that was quite scary too.