By now you have maybe heard about Atlanta's rare tornado downtown. Downtown Atlanta is, as the crow might fly, about five miles from our house. The dangerous Friday night storm came out of nowhere fast with very little warning. Close to 9:30 PM, looking west out the back of our house, we heard thunder and saw a great amount of lightning in the distance. A quick look at the weather.com radar showed a big red blob of sorts moving our way. Without anyone telling us to, we headed to the basement. We woke Amelia from her sleep and carried her down the basement stairs. Not that there should be any fanfare, but this was Amelia’s first trip to our dusty basement. We tuned the radio to WSB AM 750 only to hear no warnings, just the SEC basketball game being called. As we listened waiting for warnings,the weather soon made that basketball game very unusual as a tornado scraped the side of the Georgia Dome. The powerful winds rocked the scoreboard back and forth above the players sending them and many fans to the tunnels. The tornado next took aim at the skyscrapers and condo lofts east of downtown, but away from us.
Nothing happened here at our home except some heavy rain and some wind. Amelia seemed confused that we had awakened her from her sleep. She soon returned to the safety of her crib. All was well until the next afternoon when we had to retreat to the basement yet again for another line of strong storms. We dodged all the bad storms and by Sunday we were walking in sunshine.
