Around 1993 or so, (can't remember), the power went out on a Thursday night. Woke up Friday, no power, no big deal. Showered in the dark, got dressed and drove to work.
(I did notice that one of the roads I normally take had a lot of tree debris on it but I didn't think any thing of it.
Turned on the radio, all I heard was the Atl. radio station say that Walton Co. schools were closed, turned off radio shortly after that.
Decided about noon to take off work b/c my neck was very sore.
Got to the place where I saw the debris this morning.....well the "chicken poultry plant" (yea, I know it's redundant but that's what we called it, lol.) was totally gone!
That's when I found out a tornado (actually the weather service said it was a "downburst"
had hit Monroe. I had to take the long way around to get home. What normally would have taken me about 5 minutes took me an hour.
My mom didn't know until Friday morning when she called my sis in law (who lived on the same street) to see why she had power (actually it was sunlight, lol). My sil said "Didn't you know that a tornado hit Monroe last night?!!"
There were lots and lots of trees down but thankfully, no one was hurt. It was amazing all those trees and very few houses!
Cute story...Media types that do a lot of research
..were reporting that the top of the courthouse had blown off and landed on the top of the next building...Wrong!! As you can see in the pic, the courthose never had a spiral top!
(This picture was taken after the "tornado". There used to be two rows of large trees along the path to the steps.
http://www.cviog.uga.edu/Projects/ga...s/waltonCH.htm