Tornado

Yesterday was quite an interesting day here in Johnson City!  It was so nice and warm, in the 80's, just beautiful.  We were wanting to take a trip to Ashville, NC (only about an hour and 10 minutes away) to walk the kids around and just take in all of the down town festivities, so we checked the weather to see if it would rain on us.  It showed possibility of showers and pretty small at the top of the screen it said "Tornado Watch."  They listed a whole bunch of counties and this isn't the first time they've done it this year, so we decided to go on our little trip.  So we went, stayed a couple of hours, the weather was wonderful, the kids had a good time climbing rocks and feeding pigeons at the park.  When we finally did decide to drive home, we realized how big the storm was as we were driving back into it.  There were a lot of very suspicious clouds, including this one:

I'm not sure if it was a funnel cloud or not, but it sure looks like one.  We didn't ever see it touch ground or anything.  We got home and the sun was coming out and it was still warm and pleasant, so we ordered McDonald's for the kids and Brian and I picked up our take-out from the Stir Fry Cafe.  Once we got back to our apartment, we put the kids to bed and watched the first two hours of Gone With The Wind on netflix, then went to bed.  This morning when I woke up and checked facebook, I learned that there had been a tornado touch down only about 5 or 6 minutes away from us down by the medical school and VA grounds and that people around town had been without power for around 8 hours, multiple people had power lines down in their neighborhoods.  How ours didn't go out, I have no clue.  It was out at the house we used to live in though.  People have told me that they heard a siren come from ETSU with a voice telling them to take cover.  I've borrowed some pictures from other people of the path of destruction it left behind.  It's kind of eerie how our night was so different from the nights of others just 5 minutes away.

Here's a link to a news report about it.

These are pictures from my friend Tiffany's house.  Their shed USED to be attached to the house.  You can go to her BLOG for her account of the tornado.

These next pictures are of the VA Grounds where the medical school is located.  Pictures are courtesy Kim Brookes.  You can view her blog HERE for her details.

Trees literally broken in half near the medical school parking lot.

This building behind the fallen down trees was where Brian's White Coat ceremony was held his first year of medical school.

Click on this picture to enlarge it and look at the roof on the building in the background.