Urban Tornado

Late last night, a powerful tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta, smashing windows, tossing cars around like crushed Coke cans, and terrorizing tens of thousands of basketball fans assembled in the Georgia Dome. The area around CNN Center — where we took our family on a tour just last Wednesday — has been repeatedly described as a “war zone,” and the Georgia Dome — where one of the nephews watched a game just 2 hours ago — has been closed due to damage and flooding.

Here in Midtown, Clyde and I are perfectly safe. We were about half-way through a recorded episode of Jericho when our Tivo blanked out the show and replaced it with a tornado warning.

From our vantage point on the 8th floor, we’d been watching the storm approach for the last half-hour. The fast-moving clouds were riddled with blue-white arcs of lightning, and, just before the storm hit, it looked as though the entire sky had been filled with strobe lights.

About 9:40, a wall of wind and water slammed through our neighborhood. The rain was so thick and fast-moving, we could barely see the Mayfair Towers just one block away. In the high wind, the rain was entirely horizontal, moving in rippling sheets that roared as they fell.

Here in our brick and concrete tower, we never felt unsafe … but I was very, very happy not to be outside (or in a trailer!).

Photo Credit: Kyle Almond / CNN