Report from the Jasper Outpost
So I’ve been living a highly self-centered life as of late. I guess I missed just how close the hurricane would be coming to my parents’ mountain home. Sorry, guys! I’ll try and pay more attention!! Here’s my Dad’s report:
Old people really do talk about the weather. Compared to our southern neighbors, I guess we came through it fine. Power out for about 18 hours, trees down on my apparently indestructable barn, and an impassable driveway. The buckets of rain have turned our lake brown and the “stream” under the dam looks like a whitewater river…
Mostly, the only real scary parts were the gusts of who-knows-how-fast swirling winds. Before the power went out, we watched our Atlanta weathermen flex their technology showing an almost infinite number of tornado-lets being generated in the bands of thunderstorms up here. Later, we watched them ourselves through our own back windows sending the tall trees into gyrating chaos.
So what’s to do? We listened to a book on tape that finally lulled us to sleep. I suppose all’s well that ends well, but is was a night not soon to be forgotten…
Here’s Mom’s report:
Well we weathered a very scary night. The power went off at 6PM yesterday and came back on about noon today. Until it got too dark, we watched the trees blowing back and forth, sometimes two adjacent trees going in opposite directions. Mickey watched a very large tree fall across the pavilion he built next to the barn, but it doesn’t seem to have done too much damage. We have lots of other trees down in the woods, and Al had to remove one from our driveway in order to get up it. Fortunately that one was already dead and didn’t weigh too much. Another one fell across our power line and dropped it into the road, closing the road. The rain got so heavy that we couldn’t see the trees at all. The wind howled all night. Water streamed down the insides of our walls and flooded the floors and kitchen countertops. We built a fire, put towels along the walls and on the counters, and listened to a book on tape. Except for the fact that our driveway about washed away, we seem to be in reasonably good condition.
