Tornadoes in Downtown ATL?

This is not what anyone expected yesterday. The photo on the left is from AP. Check out their story.

I was on my way home from a Pampered Chef party and notices lot of lightening and some thunder. It just seemed like a spring thunderstorm. When we turned on the TV the news was reporting that something was going on at the dome where they were playing the SEC basketball tournament.

It was something alright. As the night progressed, the news crews got the cameras rolling and there had been a "probable" tornado. Nobody would call it until the National Weather Center did their assessment. It didn't really take a meteorologist to determine that, in fact, Atlanta had a tornado hit downtown. When they finally confirmed the tornado, it was an EF-2 with 130 MPH winds.

For those of you reading who know we live close to Atlanta, we're ok. We had a little scare this morning, though. After seeing the news last night, we knew that the weather was still uncertain.

I have to give kudos to the weather channel's Notify service. It is worth every penny! You
pay an annual subscription and set up the Notify service. The service lets you select how you want them to communicate with you and under what kind of watch/warning. We have it set up to email us unless there is a warning in our zip code. A thunderstorm or tornado warning triggers a phone call to our home phone, Clif's cell phone, and my cell phone. When all three phones ring simultaneously at our house....bad weather is on its way!

This morning at 6:30 all phones were ringing. In my stupor I answered. It was just a thunderstorm waring. Clif turned on the tv to watch. I rolled over to continue my morning snore pattern. Ten minutes later...all phones ringing. It's amazing how fast I wake up when Jim Cantore tells me that there is a tornado WARNING for my town. Thank you Jim for making all of those recordings so I know to get my kids out of harms way on the second floor.

I didn't even listen to all of Jim's message. We ran up the stairs to wake up our 4 children to head to the basement. Fortunately, 1) we have a basement and 2) they are more like their daddy than their mommy when it comes to being pulled out of bed. They woke up quickly and had fun in the basement for about 30 minutes.

We are under a watch again until 7pm tonight. I hope Jim doesn't call!