The Personal Blog

July 30th was turning out to be just another day. Me and my mom went out and got some O'Charleys for dinner and brought it back for all of us to eat at home. I was getting my cajun chicken pasta out of the sack when I noticed the television in the back. It showed a severe thunderstorm warning for Crittenden County, which is just across the river. I went about my way, helping get the rest of the food out and ready to eat. I went to the fridge to grab a drink and peeked at the television again. This time, it was a tornado warning. So I grabbed my food, ran upstairs and fired up the television and computer to track it.

The storms got closer and closer as the skies got darker and darker. I'm sitting here thinking to myself, "It's going to die out before it gets here. Nothing's going to happen in the city." Then, I saw a tornado warning pop up directly over me, and for a good part of Bartlett, which is just northeast of here. The rains came and we lost satellite signal for our televisions, but we still had the internet. I tracked the storm as it moved directly over us, but it never dropped a funnel. That is, until it got closer to the Wolfchase Galleria area. For those of you that don't know about this area, it is the main place to go in Memphis to shop. It has the city's largest mall, as well as a TON of stores all around it on both sides of I-40. We watched the storm as it moved over the area, and when we got our television signal back, the damage reports started coming in.

The first reports were making it sound like the shopping area was a warzone with buildings destroyed and leveled. As it turns out, the main area of concern was around the Kohls on Germantown Parkway at I-40. The corner of the building has broken off, almost exactly like what happened to the Sears store at the Hickory Ridge Mall a while back. It also overturned a tractor trailer truck in the parking lot and shattered windows in cars and nearby businesses.

Another tornado, pictured above, dropped in Olive Branch, Mississippi causing quite a bit more damage. There were no homes completely leveled, but in one sub-division, the entire 2nd story of a home was ripped off. It was quite a bit more powerful and was on the ground for a longer amount of time than the one that hit inside the Memphis area.

The official ratings of these two storms were quickly determined by the National Weather Service here in Memphis. The one that struck the Wolfcreek shopping area here in town was rated an EF-1, while the Olive Branch tornado was rated an EF-2. Luckily, nobody was hurt or killed during the storm. However, there was one reported injury during cleanup in the Rock Creek Pkwy. area when a man fell 20 ft. We were very lucky, this time.