Severe Weather Alert

It is a beautiful spring day in Atlanta today. Other than the leaves stuck to every building and car and fallen trees and broken power lines all over the city, you wouldn't know how awful the weather was last night. We went out for a friend's birthday dinner early last night at 5 and were so thankful to have gotten home by 7:30 becuase the rain had turned into severe storms really quickly. Our power went out a little after and as we looked through the window it was so strange to just see empty darkness, no lights on in any building. The sky wasn't fully dark yet since the sun hadn't set but it was a really strange hue. We talked to a friend who had been in tornado areas before and she said the sky wasn't quite the right color for a tornado. But before we knew it, tornado alarms were ringing and the rain turned into very large pieces of hail flying so fast in the wind. In a matter of two minutes, hail covered the lawn behind our apartment and it looked like it had snowed. Our roof was being pelted as was our back door and porch and to see the debris flying so close to our window made Bob and I run into our bathroom for protection. Of course, the power went out and we lit all the candles. Luckily we are a candle family and had tons laying out already. It was quite romantic actually, except for the fact that we are dogsitting an extremely anxious dog that takes medication for this on a regular basis, so you can imagine how this was heightened by storms. Us, being the food lovers and cheapskates that we are, loaded our cooler with ice and perishables in case the power was going to be out the rest of the night. Things started to calm down and the power came back on, but at 2am we were awakened by more alarms. I peered out the window and nothing seemed to be going on. Bob and I both had awakened from a deep sleep and were to tired to figure anything out so we went back to sleep and luckily all was well. It was interesting to assess the damage today. The things that people have to be most careful about are falling trees--on cars, homes, etc. and broken power lines. We took advantage of the beautiful day today and in celebration of Bob taking his huge counselor's exam this morning (yes the morning after all this drama), we went to the zoo. We parked on a sidestreet near some homes and as we were walking to the zoo we kept hearing a popping noise behind us. We couldn't figure out what it was and chalked it up to someone working with a nail gun. However, on the way back we figured out the noise culprit. The popping was an exposed wire hitting a tree branch causing sparks. Nice. Right over our parked car. I thanked the Lord for not letting it catch on fire and we moved on out of there as fast as we could! We have now survived almost any kind of weather we could imagine!