“It was a dark and stormy night.”
The opening line to many horror stories would have been very appropriate as the midnight hour approached Wednesday night. Customers stopping by the Hot Spot on U.S. 41 north of Barnesville, talked nervously about the weather that had taken many lives earlier in the day. Little did they know, they were about to live through their own horror story.
The occasional lightning flash to the west grew more intense with every passing moment.
The hillside across the road limited the view to just a few hundred yards of pine trees surrounding a church.
Around 12:45, there were a couple of cars at the fuel pumps and several more parked out front, when everything went dark. The constant lightning over the hill made the quarter mile wide funnel cloud clearly visible.
All but one customer scrambled into the store, she sat frozen in her car. A man rushed back out and pulled her from the car and into the store just seconds before the wind and debris began shredding the place.
Eleven people huddled in the drink cooler as the EF-3 twister roared through the aisles.
In less than 90 seconds, it was over.
Everyone survived and physically were fine, psychologically they had endured what will likely be the most intense moment of their lives.
The owner told TGA news that he intends to rebuild in the same location and hopes to be open for business again in three months.
The view across the road, in both directions, will be very different.
For more pictures, click here.
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