Tornados, storms

Severe weather hit East Tennessee on April 27 as part of a huge weather event that caused much death and destruction across several states. Fortunately the Tennessee Piller's are all fine.

On Wednesday afternoon I was at work in Oak Ridge and the lab issued a "shelter in place" warning just before 4 pm which lasted about 45 minutes. Shelter in place means to proceed to the basement of a substantial building and stay away from doors and windows.

I arrived home at about 6pm and our emergency weather radio kept going off with tornado and severe thunderstorm watches and warnings for our area. All of the tornado warnings were to the south and east of us. Just before 10pm however during an impressive thunderstorm the radio went off and issued a tornado warning for where we live. We were prepared, our suburban was parked right outside the house. We jumped in the suburban, along with Pup-pup and Kitness, and drove down to the bottom of our driveway.

Our home is a double wide trailer and it is exposed in the middle of a field so it's not a safe place to be during a tornado. The best place to be during a tornado is underground, or in a ditch or low lying area. The bottom of our driveway is about 150 feet lower in elevation that the house and is protected by sloping terrain.

This is our safe spot, at least until we get our cheese cave going :)

We waited in the suburban and listened to the radio. It was quiet and calm outside and everything was just fine. After about 45 minutes the tornado warning was lifted and we drove back to the house. Everything was just fine at our place, nobody was hurt, no damage, all of the animals were OK. There was no tornado in our immediate area.

Update: The man who is keeping cows in our upper pasture stopped by this evening. He said that while checking on his cattle he found a metal cover for an HVAC system in the middle of the pasture. I looked at the panel, it's an Intertherm panel used inside mobile homes, we have one just like it in our double wide. Apparently one of the tornadoes on Wednesday hit a mobile home somewhere and this metal panel traveled countless miles only to end up in our pasture.