Power Outage, 14 Dents in a Brand New Car, and Log Damage on Cabin

Greeneville, Tennessee, Wednesday, April 27, 2011, should probably be coined National Bad Weather Day. We got off easier than some and harder than others. My heart goes out to the many people who had to deal with much harder challenges than my husband and I had to face.

Prior to my husband going off to make his daily evening visit to help take care of his invalid mother in the nursing home in Greeneville, Tennessee, the thunder and lightning crashes were violent enough that we both unplugged our computers. We are both writers. He is a sports writer covering the Tennessee Vols. I am a freelance writer for Associated Content.com, Examiner.com, and other sites.

After about an hour, things seemed to calm down enough that I felt it safe to reactivate my laptop computer. I also started dinner. I was cooking spaghetti sauce. I planned to make the noodles as soon as my husband returned home so that they would be fresh and hot.

Around 8:15 p.m., my husband gave me a call after leaving the nursing home. He planned to pick up a couple of items at the grocery store. He never suspected what he was going to have to face in just a few minutes nor what the residents at Life Care Center in Greeneville were going to have to face that night.

Around 8:30 p.m., the lights in our log cabin flickered and then came back on. There was very little rain at the moment; therefore, I found this odd. I just had time to safely turn off the computer when the entire cabin was plunged into darkness. That's when the rain began to come down in droves and the limbs on the trees began to lash back and forth.

I grabbed my flashlight and walked out onto the front porch. The lightning flashed so bright at some points that the whole neighborhood became as bright as day. Then the hail began to fall. The hail came directly downward the first round. Some stones were as large as golf balls. Some stones were pea size. I began praying for my husband at that point, hoping he was still safely in the grocery store rather than out on the road.

The hail stopped for about five minutes. Then it resumed falling even harder than before. I was driven indoors to watch as it was coming in at a direct angle. I worried about the people and critters out in this horrible storm.

I held the flashlight at the ready, hoping to help guide my husband home. About two minutes after the second onslaught of hail, that severely damaged one of our foundational logs, he came pulling up.

He reported that he was still five minutes from our home when the hailstones hit his car so hard that he almost got knocked off the road. The driver in the car next to him was in such a panic that he or she stopped the car right in the middle of the road. Not wishing to be a sitting target, Randy did his best to keep driving.

Just two weeks before, I had been out driving when a massive hail storm hit. I was grateful that those hailstones were not big enough to dent in my car. I know, however, how frightening it is to be driving out in those conditions since you don't know whether your windshield might shatter on top of you. My husband had one hailstone hit so hard that he thought it might happen to him.

We were without power until 10:45 that night. Only then was I able to finish cooking dinner. The next morning, we saw fourteen dents on his brand new car. A week later, when getting repair estimates from a body shop was when we saw the large hole in the driver side view mirror. It was definitely larger than a golf ball.

As for his mother and her fellow residents in the nursing home, there was a power outage, The staff had to get all the wheel-chair bound residents out of bed and away from the windows and roll them into the hallway. It was not until 3:00 in the morning that they finally were able to get all the residents safely back to their beds.

During the week that has elapsed, I heard stories such as my husband's boss had his truck severely damaged and sustained about $25,000 dollars damage on his house. One of his interns got hit by a hailstone so hard that he had to go to the hospital with a concussion. A car dealer in the Tri-Cities had almost his entire inventory damaged. One of my mother-in-law's nurses had a family member who had their entire house reduced to rubble. I ran into a woman in Family Dollar yesterday who showed off the bruises on her feet and legs as she rushed to rescue her husband. She had returned home ten minutes after the roof collapsed on her husband's head. Thankfully, he did not have a scratch. There are countless people trying to pick up the pieces of their lives, buying necessities.

I was grateful to hear that my parents and siblings made it off relatively okay; however, my older brother and family in Huntsville, Alabama were without power from Wednesday through Monday.

Insurance will cover our auto damage. I'm not sure about the damaged log on our house. However, I feel it will be a long time before any of us will forget the events of that harrowing night.