Severe Weather

So this week has had lots of severe weather here in East Tennessee.  Monday was the beginning of it, to the best of my memory. 

I came home from school Monday and got in bed to sleep.  I had not slept long before school and I was scheduled to work that night.  I got to sleep for about two hours before I woke up just burning up!  That was the first conscious thought I had when I woke up, "Why the hell is it so hot in here ?!?" 

My internal thermostat turning up to the fires of hell when I sleep is a topic of debate between Raven and I, but suffice it to say that if it is any way warm in the room where I am trying to sleep, it does not work out very well.  So, as my senses are coming to me, I notice that it sounds, quite literally like I am trying to sleep in the middle of a train wreck.  The power had apparently blinked out and when that happens, it turns off the air conditioner.  Boo no air! 

I got up and turned the AC unit back on, and crawled back in bed only to lie there and not be able to sleep.  Normally, I sleep quite well when it is raining or storming.  This was considerably worse than just a thunderstorm.  I watched out my front door for a while and the hail was pretty neat.  It looked like someone had opened a huge bag of white peas and dropped them in front of my apartment.  I've not had much experience with hail.  However, not getting any sleep made me quite pleased when I ended up getting COH'd from work. 

Then we have today/tonight.  It has stormed almost all day.  There were bad storms across Arkansas all day yesterday so they finally reached us.  When I woke up this afternoon, there were at least four messages from the NWS telling me that we were under a tornado warning.  It never really went out of effect until almost midnight.  We mostly got a lot of thunder and lightening.  That was surprising to me since we usually end up getting the worst of the bad weather where we live. 

I had hoped to be COH'd again tonight, but it didn't happen that way. 
I need to workon this some more in a bit, right now- duty calls!  To be continued...

So anyway, where was I?  Ah yes, the storms today. 

Most of town got hit with some bad stuff.  There was hail from pea sized to grapefruit sized.  Can you imagine it raining grapefruit?  I know several people who had their windshied's busted out of their cars from it.  I am truly glad that we didn't get any of that. 

The drive in to work was interesting.  There wasn't much rain, but the sky was alive with lightening.  A few miles down the road from my house, I heard on the radio that there was a tornado in Oak Ridge and it was heading towards Powell, where I work.  I had to get gas across the street from work, and as I went in to pay for it, the rain hit.  It was torrential!  In the 20 or so feet from the door back to the car I was completely drenched! 

I think it will be interesting on the drive home in the morning to see the newly formed lakes from all the rain.  I think the weather channel was showing that we got about 4 inches of rain in the last 24 hours.  That's a lot!  Makes me wish I had a garden, it would be growing so well with all the rain we've had this year! One of the ladies I work with is worried about her house in Maryville.  Apparently they got hit worse than we did here.  I hope that it is all still in one piece. 

Anyway, enough random rambling!  It will be time to go home soon and I am losing focus.