...and ANOTHER major reason that April just needs to get GONE, y'all...

...This marks the one year 'remembrance' of the massive tornado outbreak that ravaged much of the southeast, with Alabama taking the brunt of it... this region just seems to be in the 'right' wrong place in terms of the ingredients for cooking up MAJOR tornadoes... we've had more around here over the years than anywhere...including the Great Plains area, where most folks think of when tornadoes are discussed. This outbreak yielded the most tornadoes EVER recorded in a region for a 24-hour period... approximately 208.

Here's just a few links regarding the insane events of that day...hard to 'relive' this, even tho we personally suffered NO damage at all... but...it still affects ya...

April 27, 2011 Tornado Outbreak

One of many heavy Youtube Videos...

...in that video, those folks get to about a block away from where my old house was (now a vacant lot)... we had moved out about 7 years before, and moved across town. That video was at least a few weeks after the fact...we more or less walked that same route about an hour after it happened, looking for a few folks to see if they were OK - they were - and literally hundreds of trees were everywhere...once you got in the 'ground zero'' area, it was hard to even figure out where you were...and this was again just a few blocks from where I lived for 7 years! It's as close as a civilian can get to being in the middle of a war zone...something I NEVER want to do again.

Still a pretty dang hard thing to watch, and even tho I'd say as of today, 90% of everything is cleared out and/or rebuilt... but there's just stuff here that will ALWAYS be reminders...such as the mangled remnants of trees, many of which, strangely enough, are popping out with leaves - they look like weird, prehistoric deals, just large 30-foot tall 'stumps' with a 'dollop' of green on top... and of course, there are still houses here and there for whatever reason haven't been touched for a year - ready for those to be leveled...but nobody wants to pay to do that.

Well, the good news for here and now is, there's been no threat of bad weather for the last few months now, which has been good - cause LOTS of folks around here are pretty shell shocked, and even the threat of bad weather would freak folks out.

Well, sorry to post another 'downer' topic, but...it was just too big of an event to not 'document'... but seems like the area is recovering, and folks are more aware of how to rebuild, with 'safe rooms', and stronger general construction, so, that's a good thing to come out of all this.

Thanks to all who gave T&P during that time...and please keep the area in mind, as there is STILL quite a bit of things needed to get back to 'normal'...

I promise the next post will be a bit more 'light'...dang, it BETTER be...

VKMfanHuey
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