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A day of Nashville fails

It was Monday, we got up, got everyone to school, I was working on a project when I got a call at 10:28 from our front desk that she’d heard from a tenant in our building that Metro schools were closing and was making sure I knew because I always email blast a few people when I’ve got to leave and hadn’t.

I had not heard of this. The decision was made due to some weather forecasting that claimed insane storms were going to be around the area at 1:30. Schools closed, government non-essential employees were let go early, and I was expected to know to get my kid at 11:30.

I get calls from the school for fundraisers, if the schools are opening late because it’s a little too cold, and if there’s a chance for them to make money off of selling something, but yeah, I got nothing. No calls. Wife got no calls. No emails. No calls on the backup work phones.

I texted the teacher at 11:10 and mentioned I’d heard fifth hand at this point that school was closing and making sure this was the case. Yes it was. 11:30 pickup time.

11:30 I got to the school, the new estimated arrival time of STORMAGEDDON was about 2pm. OK, no big, we went and got Maggie some food, went to work for a few minutes, and headed home for even more food and naps.

Heading home around 12:50 was insane. It was full on evacuation level. Roads were jammed, still moving, but people were taking their kids and getting back home.

We got back, I got Maggie down for a nap about 2. At this point the storm to end all storms was supposed to hit at 5ish. No calls, no emails, no texts. Had I not worked with someone who heard I’d just not have gotten Maggie until the school called me.

Maggie was a bit worried about the storm, but I told her she needed to get some rest to ride it out. She conked out for two plus hours.

4:30 rolls around and we headed to get baby. The sky was looking a little rainy, winds of up to 15 mph were blowing, but nothing much.

Got in, got out, back home. Daycare was nearly empty.

Tornado alerts were issued. I still had no calls, emails, texts informing me that anything was up.

6 something the rain hit. Hit may be a strong term here. It rained enough that things got wet, but the neighbor’s car still was almost dry underneath. The rain left, there wasn’t even a shotglass worth of rain.

7ish It started raining again, this time ever so slightly harder. By the time stormageddon was done at 7ish plus ten minutes we had less than half an inch of rain. A couple of leaves had overturned.

At 26 hours since the evacuation of Nashville I’ve still got no calls, emails, or texts

Paul King

Paul King lives in Nashville Tennessee with his wife, two daughters and cats. He writes for Pocketables, theITBaby, and is an IT consultant along with doing tech support for a film production company.