Boy, the storm that came through last night seemed bent on causing as much damage as possible in as little time as possible. We weren't even paying attention to the TV news. My sister called and said there was a tornado warning for Spring Hill. I can never remember whether a warning or watch is worse. Well, channel 2 (WKRN) was covering the mess and did a great job of pin pointing just where the bad stuff was and what we could expect. At first it was just a little lightning and thunder. Then the it arrived as predicted. Hail up to 2.5 inches just pounded for what seemed like 5 minutes. It wasn't just coming down straight. It was coming in fast and at an angle. 2.5 inches was the largest. Most of it was about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch. Sounded like machine gun fire as we all crouched into the downstairs bathroom. The power blinked off for about a minute. I thought for sure we would have some broken windows by the magnitude of the tapping on the glass. Then, just like that, it stopped. The rain however was relentless. When the bad stuff passed we crept out of the make-do bunker and looked outside. There piled up on the back porch and all over the lawn was the hail. I couldn't tell if we had any damage, but I knew after a quick survey that we didn't have any broken windows. The grill cover was totally ripped to shreds. We'd have to wait until morning to see the extent.
So the next morning I go out and look around. Four screens had been ripped where the hail stones had torn through. About 15 different places along the back side of the house had holes in the vinyl siding where a large stone had struck... always right along the bottom lip of the siding. Then I checked out the cars which were outside. Each roof had signs of damage like someone had lightly tapped a bunch of times with a hammer.
So a call to the insurance company and a siding/roofing company got a monday appt for an appraisal of the damage. We are all safe and that is the best thing.
