-- The Winds Of Change (aka Coyotes and Deer and Turkeys, Oh My!)

     For those of you not in the Chattanooga area, there was a nasty series of tornadoes that blew through our area on Friday night.  Let me start off by saying that we're all fine, but the tornadoes kept dropping all around us.  There was a tornado that touched down (officially unconfirmed at the time of writing this) just about half a mile WNW of where we live now (Island Cove Marina).  It traveled in an ENE direction, just barely avoiding the subdivision we live in now, but it zeroed in on the subdivision we are building in (Hampton Cove).


     The sheriff was on the news and said the area of our new subdivision was a "war zone",  We saw pictures of a tractor trailer that was delivering furniture to a house about five doors down from our new property.  It was blown onto it's side and into the house it was delivering to.  The subdivision that is right next to ours had a house collapse with people in it, and another house that was lifted off of it's foundation and blown into the neighbor's house.


     Needless to say we weren't really looking forward to seeing how bad our beautiful new neighborhood was hit.  The ride to the subdivision was not comforting:

     We drove up there and there were police stopping everyone and questioning why they were there.  Most were getting turned around, but most were lookie-loo ghouls who were driving around excited to see all of the damage, or worse yet, capitalize or loot on it.  It was a little difficult to get through, because obviously, our drivers licenses don't have the new address on it yet, but Penny turned on the waterworks, and we were let in.


     It was bad, y'all.  Real bad.  Let's start with our property.  

Here's a picture from Thursday:

 And the same angle on Saturday:

Our tree lined back yard is gone.

If you look at the video from my last post, you'll see a port-a-potty on the front of the property.  Here it is now against the back fence.

Here are some other shots from the neighborhood  Some of these are going to look like some missing trees, but keep in mind, there were thick woods behind the subdivision.

This poor guy had all of his windows blown out - and all three of his cars badly damaged

This was thick tree line. Also, if you look closely, you can

see the subdivision behind us that had the house collapse.

Here is our property from a distance, you can 

see the roof damage on the houses on both sides of us.

     Some of you may have heard about the airstrip behind our house.  Well, that guy's plane was in pieces all over the runway.  There was another house being built about two doors down.  It was almost done, but the garage doors hadn't been put on yet.  The storm got in there and blew the wall out and took off part of the roof.


     While we were on our property, surveying, we finally got to meet one of the neighbors.  His name is Scott, and he seems like a really nice guy.  He is divorced and lives with his two children, young girlfriend, his niece, and his small dog.  He moved to Chattanooga in about 2006 and has lived in Hampton Cove for about 2 years (sounds like Penny and I except without the kids and niece, and I would be Penny's younger girlfriend in this scenario).  He really loves the neighborhood, except for the coyotes.


     That's right, coyotes.


     What coyotes you may ask?  Well, apparently, there's a bunch of coyotes living in the area, roaming the street willy-nilly.  The girl who sold us the house didn't mention anything about the coyotes.  They are supposedly really skittish around people, but Scott didn't say anything about how they are around chihuahuas.  I guess our dreams of letting p-nut roam the backyard freely are now out.


     Scott went on to tell us about the deer that are always in the back yard as well, (which makes up for the coyotes).  There's also a bunch of wild turkey's that fly around and are often seen in the neighborhood too.


     So in conclusion, we lost some trees, but made out better than most people in that subdivision.  I think it's safe to say that our move-in date is going to be pushed back.  There were about five homes under construction by our contractor, and every single one of them had some major damage.  I don't know how those people are handling it.  I remember my first new car.  It was a Jeep Wrangler and I loved it and took extra special care of it.  That is, until about 4 months in, when I got hit by a car that got hit by a drunk driver.  It never was the same after that, and I just had some minor damage.  I don't think I could move into a brand new house that just had it's side wall blown out.  


     I'll keep you updated as soon as we hear anything new.