We Are Okay, Blackberry Homestead With Downed Trees

Posted on by Julia

April 6, 2025

The tornado that touched down in Muscle Shoals was about 6 miles from us.

We huddled in our closet part of the night when the tornado warning sirens went off and the electronic warning said a tornado had touched down. Nox really didn’t like hanging out in the closet. I believe she could tell we were scared.

A tornado had been spotted over Sheffield, AL and we were in the box of the projected path. It touched down in Muscle Shoals, near the airport.

We lost power in fits and starts throughout the night, but never long. We are lucky as thousands of customers in the Shoals area lost power.

We weren’t the only ones who had a tornado hit nearby. A tornado touched down a mile from my sister’s house in Mississippi. It knocked trees down onto the road and tore up some of my brother-in-law’s uncle’s barns. My brother-in-law is a the chief of the volunteer firefighters in his area. He and other volunteer firefighters are out cutting up trees to clear the roads. They’ll be done by the time this is published.

This morning when I opened up the front curtains, I saw a small branch down from our purple magnolia. We decided to walk around the yard to see if we had any other damage.

Yes, oh yes, we did have other damage.

Here’s the picture of the little branch from the magnolia. The fig tree pots blew over as well as garbage cans on the other side of the house. The garbage cans are normally to the north side of the house, next to the garage wall. They were blown to the front of the house and over.

We had some dead branches from the big oak in the front come down. That will be some minor clean up.

As we passed the edge of the house, I noticed the backyard skyline was different.

Pine Tree Broken in Half

I instinctively started walking towards the broken tree. Bruce wanted to continue looking around Blackberry Homestead in a methodical manner. That made sense to me, so I turned around. We continued walking around the front.

We have large puddles in the yard.

We walked down to the mailbox and our neighbor across the road had some trees down.

The creek was full, but not overflowing.

As we came up the driveway, we noticed leaves and small branches from our neighbor’s trees on the driveway.

The neighbor’s dogwood lost some flowers into our yard.

The gardens and barn looked fine, so we moved on to the back pasture to see the damage there. We had originally thought it was the only real damage.

It wasn’t.

All our blueberries and fruit trees looked fine. The sheds in the back pasture were fine.

As we got to the south side of the back pasture, we discovered more damage. We had a three trunk tree that lost a trunk. It fell over and damaged another tree, scraping some of the bark off.

Now Two Trunks
Third Trunk Was Here!
Trunk Down and Bark Off Tree It Hit
It Fell on the Fence

In the same section, we have a tree that looks like lightning hit it. It appears to be exploded. We had so much lightning last night, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the tree had been hit. Of course, when it fell over it landed the fence.

As we walked to the area in the backyard we cleared, we noticed a large branch partially down on the fence. It was almost in the same spot a larger branch had fallen earlier.

We found a shingle off the roof and noticed this on the roofline. We haven’t seen that before.

I’ll be contacting the roofing company.

Bruce texted the south neighbor to let him know we had trees that fell on the fence.

It could’ve been so much worse. Bruce is already talking about chainsaw work when the weather is nice again.

Right now, it is drizzling and overcast.

I hope everyone else in the path of this storm system is also safe.

27 thoughts on “We Are Okay, Blackberry Homestead With Downed Trees”

  1. Looks like a wild night. I read this morning about another big storm cell heading somewhere in Alabama. We had tons of rain and high winds, and a warning and the sirens went off but no damage I noted this morning while out with the dogs. I hope all your newly planted items do okay with that much water pounding!

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  4. Alabama does get hit hard. My brother thought my parents had a death wish resettling and retiring on the Gulf Coast of Alabama in a little trailer located on the Mobile Bay. Beautiful area but every storm, they evacuated. The worst was after they had both passed away, so someone upstairs was looking out for them. Take care and stay safe.

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  5. If this weren’t such a serious situation, I would laugh about the “Three trunk tree trunk” because it sounds like a tongue twister.

    Will you two take care of all the fallen trees and branches yourselves, or will you call someone to help? Glad o hear that your family is safe!

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    1. It was meant to be a bit amusing. We have to laugh at it some.

      We (Bruce with a small amount of help from me) will be taking care of the fallen trees and branches ourselves. Bruce loves to use his chainsaw.

      I was relieved to hear my family was safe!

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Published by Julia