Events Remembered!

This was our last full day of school for 2011. Our year has been very eventful with snow, ice, tornadoes, and power outages. The state of Alabama was severely damaged by the tornadoes on April 27, 2011. My dog woke me up that morning and I turned the tv on to get the weather report as we knew from the news that we were under a slight risk on Tuesday and a moderate risk on Wednesday. My husband watched the storm out the back and when the barn across the pasture lost the roof, he came to the closet. Hanceville was first hit in the state by an F2 tornado early that morning. The devastation was not realized at first as school was delayed for two hours. My neighborhood was hit and lines were down. It was not long until helicopters were buzzing over to the subdivision across the road. Of course, we could not see the damage so we did not realize how devastating the storm had been throughout all of Hanceville. It was like a ten minute hurricane throughout Hanceville. It had effected every bus route on our end of the county. The transformers were down and the powerstation on our end of the county was out. If we had been at school, we would not have been able to get home for days. Trees were everywhere! Roads were blocked everywhere. The buses would not have been able to deliver the students home. Our campus was damaged. There was no power. Homes were damaged everywhere. I am thankful that we were at home when the storms hit. Everyone in our subdivision were out cleaning up the trees and debris. Everyone was hard at work and our neighbors from Cullman came to help out. It was only a few hours before the F4 popped over the mountain outside my bedroom window headed for Cullman. The weather that day was just eery and it was like you could feel the weather pressing on you. Seeing the devastation of these storms is heart wrenching. President Obama declared Alabama as a national state of emergency following all of the destructive tornadoes. The Alabama State Legislature passed legislation that allowed the school systems to be exempted from having to make up the days that the schools missed due to the storms.