An Extraordinary Night

of deadly tornado weather here in Tennessee. The Nashville area was very lucky as 8 severe storm cells passed either north or south of us and these cells contained tornados at some point during their travel. One major storm cell did manage to hit Nashville with 100 mph winds and hail the size of golf balls. As this storm passed downtown Nashville and headed towards my house the winds died down to 55 mph and not a lot of hail. There was still a threat of a tornado but thankfully it passed the Nashville area without one. Kentucky, again, wasn't as lucky. As soon as this storm cell hit the KY/TN border a tornado touched down. The worst area hit in TN was Memphis and Jackson. Jackson is home to Union University and the college was hit by 2 tornados. And there was a 60 semi pile-up on I-40 that shut down the interstate. The National Weather Service is still trying to count how many tornados actually touched down in those areas (one report I heard was 8). As soon as one storm cell left the area another one was right behind it and this lasted for 9 hours yesterday evening. And these same storms are heading towards the Midwest and East Coast and will produce snow and ice storms.

I have never seen such major storms and so many of them at once. And the majority of southern homes do not have basements so finding a safe place isn't easy. I became quite familiar with my jacuzzi bathtub last night and realized it is much larger than I thought!