The Sanborns

Friday morning when I woke up I had no idea what the day was going to bring. It was our 11th month anniversary of being married and my best friend’s birthday.

On Fridays I normally get up and go to work and then come back home and do chores and school work. On the 10th we were planning on taking Gray to State Farm to talk to them about an internship and then we planned to go into Nashville and pick up the miata from my brother.

Our plans came to a half and changed quickly.

At 11 that morning I was busy doing ChaCha, trying to earn a little extra money so I could go out with my friends for Trina’s birthday. I put a chicken in my stockpot to cook and had the television on channel four. They were still covering some Dan Miller footage (he was the Ch.4 anchorman and died unexpectedly) rolling and starting to cover the severe weather.

I distinctly remember hearing the weather lady say something about how they needed to watch the storm leaving Franklin. I’m thinking at this time it was noonish.

Around 12:15 or 12:20 Gray called me.

“The tornado sirens just went off here.”

“What?! There is no storm here yet!”

“Well, they went off.”

I hung up with him and went back to taking care of the chicken. At this point the storm was actually entering Rutherford county on the Western tip. If anything, I thought it would head Northeast of us and hit Smyrna.

This reminds me, the past three weeks we’ve been having severe weather with some tornados and they’ve all been steering clear of us. We did have a small tornado hit a shopping center in town, but other than that, not much was going on.

By now it was 12:25 and I was still watching the weather. This was the point where they said Blackman watch out and I decided it was time to call Gray. We both agreed that I should come to campus because I freak out during storms. I’m not a fan of tornados at all.

So, I got in the truck with my huge umbrella and started driving toward campus. This was about 12:30ish. On the way, the skies were blue and then about halfway there it started to hail. It wasn’t bad, but it scared the daylights out of me! When I got to campus the sky was dark overhead. I did not see any funnel clouds but I was so out in the open that I wasn’t taking any chances.

I ran not stop from the parking lot to the computer lab where Gray was at, I think a total of 2-3 minutes of running. I was out of breath when I reached the doorway.

As soon as I reached the door the tornado siren went off again. I’m pretty sure at this point the massive tornado was on the ground in Blackman (west Murfreesboro).

Within 5-10 minutes of being inside we watched some footage taken from downtown Murfreesboro showing the torando going behind the courthouse.

I had never seen such a large tornado in my life in Tennessee ever.

We ended up watching Channel 5 online, not knowing the full extent of what happened until much later.

Once everything was over and the warning was done, Gray and I went back to our apartment and put on the news. We needed to go to Nashville, but the interstate was closed, except for one exit. All the major roads to get onto the interstate were effected by the tornado in some way. We ended up taking our chances and got on Broad street to go to 840 so we could get on the interstate.

It ended up taking over a hour for us to get to the interstate because traffic lights were down on the North side of town.

On the way out of town we saw some of the damage (the picture from yesterday) and it felt so surreal!

As of today I’ve seen more damage and I’m still in disbelief. They’ve confirmed that over 50 homes were destroyed with 200-300 damaged in some way or shape. The tornado has been upgraded to a F4 tornado, the kind I always thought you would only see in Oklahoma or somewhere closer to tornado alley.

I’m thankful that out of all of this destruction, only two people have died and 50ish have been injured. We know of at least two families who had damage to their homes, one of which is completely gone. After hearing about how close it came to some houses but missed them, it’s insane!

If you look closely in the map above, you can see where we live and where the tornado’s path was. We are so fortunate that the tornado did not come close enough to us, we live about 3.5 miles from the destructed areas.

Although I did not get to see the tornado in person, I have seen enough damage and destruction to last me a lifetime.