Tornado

Saturday morning I woke up in the motel, still hearing rain. Over the morning several rain storms moved through, a few with lightening, but no more hail and no tornado. Not in Carthage anyway. A woman who works at the motel offered me a ride the last 60 miles to Jackson, where I could catch a train home. I'd only planned to ride a couple more days anyway, and after these storms and the continueing rain, I decided to take her up on it. When she (Annette) was done cleaning rooms we loaded my bike and bags and she drove me to Jackson and down to the train station. The train left at 5:44 PM and headed north. About an hour later we stopped because a tornado had roared through the town of Yazoo City a few hours early, leaving behind a path of destruction which included trees and powerlines laying on the tracks. When the tracks were cleared enough for the train to go through we went past some of the worst damage I've ever seen with my own eyes. I had a lump in my throat, and the passengers of the train were, like me, dumbfounded and kept muttering "oh, my god", looking at it. I snapped several pictures, could have had more but I would find myself just staring in horror, too stunned to take pictures sometimes. 1o people died in that tornado, and it's amazing it wasn't more. Huge trees, really HUGE trees were just snapped off and tossed through the air and lay heaped this way and that. There were houses with roofs torn off, windows blown out. Power lines down all over. People standing in the road just, well...standing in the road. When you look at the pictures, realize that hours before, those were huge, tall trees. Now you see dozens of broken stubs of limbs and it's hard to fathom how much damage there was.
Being this close to the raw power of destruction gave me a feeling of awe for the power the creator - God - has. Very humbling.