Yesterday morning on the way to work, I heard on the radio that severe weather had passed through Missouri, Arkansas, and I thought I heard Tennessee in there, but I didn't catch all of it. Once I got to my desk, I started poking through the latest news to confirm if Tennessee had been affected. I found that tornados had hit Kansas pretty hard, but I didn't see anything on Tennessee. Obviously I wasn't paying close enough attention.

Last night I got a call from my ex-wife in Lexington, TN, asking if I had heard about the storms. This was my first clue that maybe my quick search that morning wasn't quite as thorough as necessary. Melissa told me that tornados had ripped through Jackson (the near-by "big town"), killing several people, demolishing the main Post Office, and had also come into Lexington. The Johnson Controls plant in Lexington (what locals call "the metal plant") had its roof blown off, and homes just to the north of it were destroyed. The metal plant is less than a mile north of Melissa's house, so the tornado was very close by. Several trees in the neighborhood, including a huge, stately oak at her father's house, were uprooted by the wind. She and our two kids, Kristin and Sean, and Sean's girlfriend April huddled in the bathroom while the storm passed. While the worst of the weather bypassed them, they didn't get much sleep that night.

Lesson learned: don't depend on MSN.com for your "bad weather" news stories.