There were several different "waves" that came across the state, the first being the system that contained the killer tornado that struck Yazoo City and Choctaw County, Mississippi. And much like the tornado that hit Weir and Caledonia in January 2008, we were at the farm watching and listening to weather reports warning us that it was coming right for us.
The storm in 2008 did pass directly over us while we were milking. Once it got about two minutes away from us, we shut off all of our milking equipment and hunkered down in our pit-style parlor. The tornado had picked back up into the clouds, thank goodness, but the driving rain and howling wind certainly had our attention. This weekend's storm wasn't nearly as dramatic by the time it reached us. We finished our work at the dairy about fifteen minutes before it was projected to cross between Vernon and Sulligent, and as it got closer it progressively tracked further to the north. There was hardly any rain with it, allowing me to stand on my front porch and clearly see it approaching from the west. I even posted a couple of pictures of the system to Twitter and found out later that a television station in Birmingham showed them during their coverage.
We did get hit by a thunderstorm about an hour after the first system passed by, but the heavy rain and strong winds only lasted a few minutes. After that, we never saw more than an occasional gust of wind and light rain as the rest of the severe weather stayed clear of us.
We've weathered quite a few storms over the last few years, and we're lucky to have escaped them all with no injuries to us or our cattle and very minimal damage to any of our property. Our luck may run out one of these days, but for now I'm happy to say that we dodged the tornado...again.
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