I am a: Quirky sysadmin. Geek. Gamer. Comic fangirl. My little space, my home on the interwebs. I blog about personal stuffs, work, various coding projects, and anything else I feel like.

Isn’t funny how Mother Nature likes to screw with your plans?

I had fully intended on sitting down to blog and work on a couple sites last night, but the storms kept screwing with the power. I had been watching the weather all day and decided that the “hard stuff” won’t hit B’ham until after midnight and that I could easily sit and wait on it comfortably in my bed … or so I thought.

I think as soon as I laid down, I was dead to the world. The storm woke me around 1am. I quickly turned on Fox6 and Birmingham was covered in purple and David Neal was telling anyone who lived in the area to go to their “place of safety”. Jim and I looked at each other for a moment then scrambled into action. He gathered a very sleepy and confused Jessie and brought her downstairs. I turned on the news downstairs and turned the volume up so we could hear it all over the house, found a flashlight and arranged some blankets and pillows in the downstairs bathroom — it’s small, but it’s in the center of the house, away from windows.

At this point, the wind was howling like I haven’t heard in years. It was freakin’ SCARY. It sounded like a B-52 bomber was circling the house. I had no doubt in my mind that something was either coming our way, or passing overhead. And I was praying like mad for the latter.

Everything passed and quieted down after about 30 minutes. I put Jessie back to bed, then Jim and I stayed up and watched the news a little longer. There’s a Krystal’s up the road from us, about half a mile. A tornado had touched down in that area and eaten a few trees and damaged the building along with a couple other businesses, hopped over Hwy 31, and headed northeast.

We were lucky. And I still hate tornadoes.

EDIT: Do you know what really disturbs me about last night? I heard no sirens. There’s an audible warning system that was put into place here years ago, and they blare the sirens whenever there’s a tornado warning in Jefferson County. There were no sirens blaring … and I’m wondering why not?