Tornado at Black Rock Mountain

If you have read my blog many times you know how much I love spending time at the cabin my parents own up in the NE Ga Mountains. I love the trees and the smells and the cool air and the flowers that bloom....a lot of those trees are now gone.

It has been a very rough week in the southeast and I know many people lost their homes and many lost their lives, so I feel a little guilty complaining about losing something I love, but it is sad to me. Wednesday night, the same cell that spawned the storms in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham hit Lake Burton and then Black Rock Mountain in Rabun County. I have posted some photos from this past winter as I wanted you to see how many trees there were. You could barely see the ridge of the mountain, as there were so many trees even in wintertime.

There were also many trees behind the cabin. I would love to sit on the back deck in the evening and listen to all the birds in the trees....it sounded like a symphony.

I took this photo one foggy morning of the trees behind the cabin. It is weird but just last Saturday morning, I almost took another photo of the trees with fog.

When my parents left Tuesday, my mother said she had a premonition that a storm was going to come there. If they had been there, her car would have been crushed by the trees as the driveway is covered in fallen trees.

Below is what the hill behind the cabin looks like now. The trees were just stripped like they were matchsticks.

These two large trees barely missed hitting the cabin and if they had hit, considerable damage would have been done. Underneath them, I have a butterfly garden of astilbe. I almost worked in it last Friday but decided I would wait until I was up there with Jackson week after next. Jackson will never see these trees.








Unfortunately, one tree did hit the gable and the rafters are damaged, as the bathroom ceiling is bowing and broken.

The little cabin next door that has been there since the 1800's had a big gaping hole in it.

Notice how clearly you can see the ridge line now. You could never see that before.









The cabin across the street that is over a hundred years old was trapped. You could only get in to it by going on the path the workers had cut under the power line. The drive way was completely blocked.

My friend Lynn's driveway was blocked also. Notice how big the tree is below on her driveway and that was one of many.

See the man to the right?

Here is the tree that went through the roof.

Power lines are down everywhere and who knows when it will be turned back on...whole poles were twisted and laying on the road.



















A short walk away, the other side of the mountain that faces town was just as peaceful and untouched as could be....

The campground at the state park is actually full....full of fallen trees and crushed vehicles. It is closed.

Even buildings down on 441 in Mountain City felt the storm's wrath....

You won't hear about the storm hitting here or at Lake Burton or even about the man that died at Lake Burton. Yes, it could have been a lot worse, obviously as seen in other areas.

We so often take things for granted and they can be wiped out in an instant.
But it is not the things that matter....it is the people.