April 28, 2014, is a night I will never forget. We had been under a risk of severe weather during the day, and because of that, we had gotten out of school early. We had a bit of wind and rain, as well as thunder and lightning for much of the afternoon and evening.

At a little after 11:30 that night, James Spann said that Blount County had been placed under a tornado warning. Pine Mountain, where I'm from, was in the tornado polygon (warnings have been based on polygons for approximately twelve years now, since storms are small, while counties are large). Immediately after he had said that and our NOAA weather radio had gone off, the lights went off.

Then, I heard the noise. When they say that a tornado sounds like a train, it really does. I rolled off the couch and hid between the couch and the coffee table. My grandmother huddled with our dogs on the floor in her room. My brother pulled a mattress over his head as he went to the floor in his room. He also recalled hearing bricks holding our back porch up snapping and crackling.

After a few minutes, the tornado was gone. We didn't get a good look at the damage until the first light of day, and it was crazy. Trees were down. Our tree house was in pieces. Our back porch was moved from the house. Our neighbor had just completed a cabin on his little pond, and that cabin was moved in the pond. The Ridge had also received damage to many of their cabins.

The tornado was later determined to be an EF-2. From Pine Mountain, the storm headed to Straight Mountain and Highland Lake before fizzling out.

That night is a night I will never forget. Below is an image of the back porch moved from our house.

Personal Photo.