So…have you watched the news about Atlanta lately?

In case you hadn't, we kinda had an F2 tornado rip through downtown Atlanta, leaving behind a 6-mile path of destruction which included several in-town neighborhoods, the Georgia Dome, the Georgia World Congress Center and the Stacks at Fulton Cotton Mill.

Of course, I didn't find out about any of this until Saturday morning because yours truly was knocked the fuck out asleep, just two miles away from downtown.

For the most part, clean up is swift and ongoing. My neighborhood — the West End — was unscathed, but Downtown, Cabbagetown and Reynoldstown didn't fare so well. Goofball and Milk-Chan live in that area, but they're both OK with no collateral damage. Most of Downtown is still barricaded, causing what was already a maze of one-way streets an even worse maze of one-way streets. Coverage, from what I can see from the MSM outlets, is mainly in areas east of the Georgia Dome, something Creative Loafing picked up on as well. (I did see two great videos [1, 2] by Shelby Highsmith though on the damage in the nearby Vine City area.)

Che and I drove through part of downtown that wasn't blocked off this morning, and there's still a lot of debris everywhere. The view of the city skyline from the Downtown Connector, looks like a bit like Atlanta 2099 or something — windows are broken in skyscrapers, billboards are mangled and gnarled, freeway signs are bent backwards or missing their signs altogether.

Oh, and the Georgia Dome and Georgia World Congress Center? These galleries [1, 2] from the AJC show some pretty heinous damage was done by the storm. (Full disclosure: I used to work there, so seeing the place in shambles like this is really something serious.)

A tornado in the middle of downtown Atlanta…sure takes your mind off the drought, doesn't it?

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