Winds of historic proportions rock Bailey home

Joe Tippett and his wife, Janice, were asleep in their home at the corner of Old Raleigh Road and Gentle Breeze Drive when a breeze that was anything but gentle rattled their windows.

"It was just a hard, hard blast of wind," Joe Tippett said. "It was going east to west. It was in excess of 100 mph. There is no doubt in my mind."

Tree limbs scraped down the side of the house, the leaves partially blocking his view.

"I've always been afraid of tornadoes, just because of what you see on TV, and that's what basically I thought was a tornado at the time," Tippett said.

The chimney of his house still bears the scars from the winds of Hurricane Hazel more than six decades ago. He put Sunday night's wind up there with hurricane strength.

After the storm had passed and the sun rose, Tippett found his property littered with downed branches, but the biggest heartbreak was the loss of a massive pecan tree, one that had supplied the couple with hundreds of pounds of nuts each year.

The damage inside was limited to a print knocked off the wall and broken and some cracked plaster from the impact of the tree hitting outside.

"I think I was lucky, very lucky," he said. "I guess God was with me, that's the only thing I can figure out. I believe in miracles."

Several of Tippett's neighbors also reported trees and branches down, but the National Weather Service says Sunday night's storms never coalesced into a tornado.