tornados!

“lots of americans died last night round these parts. we were lucky, 2 of the worst cells skirted our area and then joined up after they passed and made the really bad cell. please say a prayer for all those affected by this tragidy....”

“The storms pushed pretty hard through Tenn. last night also. Winds reported up to 100 mph in several areas. Not sure how many tornados came through. Local schools are opening 2 hrs late due to downed trees and power lines.”

“I was wondering how you guys were doing up there. It looks pretty bad in Kansas and Missouri.”

“i hope Dunadan is okay!”

“Man tornadoes suck...”

“Keep your heads down out there. It makes it easier to kiss your keister goodbye.



I do hate tornados. I hope all the TTers in that area are safe.”

“Looks like it should have missed Dunadan, although I'm sure he's busy with post-storm water utility problems in homes.

I hope Stalker is OK! He's in the Kansas City area.

Also, I see a tornado was in Dyersburg, TN. That's under an hour from Stikmon. Wonder if he got bad weather there?

Good to hear you're OK, Strat. And to see that bacpack is posting..... lol.”

“ynami was supposed to go to Kansas City for work, but i think that wasn't until today...”

“Dyersburg and Jackson, TN were hit with multiple fatalities in both locations. Downtown Jackson, TN looks like a war zone this morning.

Grunt lives in Jackson, TD lives north and east of Jackson and my kids live due east.

Can't speak for TD and grunt, but I got my ex wife up at 2AM to check on my kids. They were fine, but her husband sounded a little pissed.”

“Any one heard anything from Stickmon it hit his neck of the woods last night as well as taking out downtown Jackson,tn looks like the total will be around 20 deaths.”

“I have a weird fascination with all this crap. Here's a column I did within the past month. (loooooooooong, but potentially fun for all who wade through it)

TITLE: Just as effective as caffeine: Severe storm season is here


Within the past two weeks, I attended a class for weather spotters, offered in Preston by the National Weather Service of La Crosse. (See front-page story.)

I was more than glad to go, assigning myself the story. Yes, I can let my secret out here. I have a morbid fascination with storms. (Is there a help group for that??)
While I am entranced by their raw beauty and fury, well, I’m also scared beyond belief.

I live in a mobile home, which is one reason my fears have expanded over the years. There’s nothing quite like knowing your major storm protection is plopping yourself in the bathtub, with something like a mattress or heavy blanket over your head.

That really is not much in the avenue of protection, to my mind at least.

Storm forecasters will encourage a person to get out of a mobile home or car in severe weather. A few years ago I read an interesting report on that, although I can’t give you the source today. It questioned how many people would actually leave what is at least warm, dry protection to run outside, into a wet (perhaps ready to flood?) low lying area in pounding rain, crazy lightning and gusting winds.

Think honestly. Could you do that? I truly don’t think I could. And I don’t think I’m the only one.

More likely, I’d be laying in bed, head covered, making whimpering noises that confound my cats. OK, sometimes I do hit the tub, in the style mentioned above, merely to save the kitty cat some anxieties.

Let’s face it; I just don’t get a lot of sleep most summers. When I hear the prediction of severe weather on any day, the foreboding starts early. As the sky darkens, I think with a bit of excitement, “Oh, here comes the storm.”

When I’m at home, I’ll stand outside, just waiting for swirling clouds to confirm I’m about to “make like” Dorothy and Toto and travel via tornado.

Then I’ll head inside and sit on the computer. You best believe I have any and every and all area radar sites bookmarked. I’m looking for that telltale hook in the angry, red storm cells. That’s where tornadoes usually form.

If I’m home and I hear the sirens go off in town, well, then I’m in a tizzy. I’ve taken a new tactic, absolutely NOT endorsed by the National Weather Service.

I get in my car and drive around.

OK, I tell myself I’m doing this under the guise of “storm chasing” and attempting to get a great storm or tornado photo. The camera is along…

Truth be told, I’d rather see for myself the bad weather out there. I recall doing this a few years ago and sitting at a gravel crossroads as a downpour and wind arrived. What I saw was most strange. It looked like little, dark funnel clouds all over with rain exploding from them. From what I know now, I’m guessing it was lots of little cloudbursts. But it sure was strange.

Last year, I got brave again and turned my car into a storm fast approaching from the northwest. I watched with glee and awe… until the sky turned sickly green immediately to my right and the wind velocity doubled. #$%$@! I turned around ASAP and drove about 90 miles per hour into town.

That, you will find, is my former escape. Heading into town and plunking down at my favorite local establishment where “everyone knows your name.”
Instead of people shouting, “Norm,” they shout, “There’s (lizs). It must be a bad one.”

The thing is, I’m much braver with other people around and think less about the consequences of bad storms. Perhaps you are, too.

When a tornado or severe weather siren goes off and a person is at work or in a store, another of the National Weather Service’s worst fears occurs: approximately 90 percent of the people in that business or store go outside or pop their head out the door to see just what exactly is happening. (OK, so 10 percent have headed to the basement.)

It’s pretty darn comical, but hard to take a picture of, what with the pitch black skies.

I’ve been in a home that had a tree hit it during a storm and after the tornado sirens. It placed a hole in the roof and outside wall. Yes, I thought I was going with Dorothy and her dog for sure that day.

Returning to my home after the turmoil, I found a huge pine tree in my front lawn laying over and blocking the county roadway. In the valley behind my place, another huge tree had been felled. Down the road, a roof had blown off a pole barn. But, ironically, my home sweet mobile home was just fine.

What will this summer hold? I hope for a few less storms around. And I hope to again make it through those that do come.

Now for the disclaimer: (lizs) does not endorse her particular storm activities for anyone. Phillips Publishing most certainly does not endorse her activities and is starting to wonder about (lizs), knowing not whether to ground her, give her a better camera for tornado pictures, or give her a bicycle to accompany the Wicked Witch of the West. Readers, stay inside, go to your basement and stay clear of windows. (There, now we might avoid that reprimanding letter from the National Weather Service, right boss?)”

“Good to see you are ok, grunt.”

“Hmmmmm, was just looking at the KC/Kansas map again. Dunadan might have been a hurting unit where he formerly lived, closer to KC, in Leavenworth Co.

Good to hear you're OK, Grunt!!

Chili, geez, wouldn't think anyone could fault you to check on your kids.”

“Im fine just scared the piss out of me. Im with stratdewd please keep the people and there families that where effected by this tragedy in your prayers.”

“Amen. Stay safe out there.”

“TD is well.. no damage.. but as you know -- Jackson ain't far and it got slammed.. as did Paris Landing and D'burg... and I hear??.. more to come this week.

There is a T-nado working its way south of me as we speak.”

“Memphis went totally unscathed so far. Everything passed either north or south of us yesterday.”

“scary. i'll stick with the earthquakes, thank you. some great funnel coming down from the sky and obliterating my house is just far too frightening.”

“Chili, geez, wouldn't think anyone could fault you to check on your kids."

That's why she's his ex now.”

“More tornados!..

Carroll County -- where I live in TN.. Cedar Grove and McKenzie..

Don't know the extent of the damage.. but touched down both there!”

“Three spotted with 10 miles of where my kids live in the past 15 minutes. Looks like two pass to the south, one to the north of them. Watching the Doppler loop for the past 15 minutes has taken a year off my life.”

“to my town...right NOW!!!! see ya all in the funny pages...I'm going to KANSAS over the rainbow. Im not foolin...its a nasty fueker.”

“Watch the main track of the storm stikmon. Twisters from supercells have a habit of hooking sharply north towards the end of their life, while the storm puts another one down along the original course track.”

“Very sad news about all the weather!

8(”

“Glad you guys are OK...

stikman...you still OK?

anyone heard from BpBaby..I sent an e-mail but haven't heard anything yet.

Stay safe all.”

“Lizs, you sound a lot like me. I've been stepping out in the yard since I was six when the warnings came on TV, and started chasing as soon as I got my license. That was 27 years ago and I've been within a mile of better than 15 twisters now. I've only acually seen one but that was by surprise and from close range.

I used to rent a mobile home right near the airport and had lots of antennas up, for full time radar broadcast by an amatuer radio guy who worked for the local CBS affiliate, one for the amatuer storm spotting network (worth the cost of the radio even if you don't have a license as they give you lots of real-time information from all over the state), and even a pair of direction finding loops for indicating lightning strikes out to 120 miles.

One night I had been watching a line of storms sagging south, tearing up silos and towns north of me all afternoon. By 11 pm it was my turn.

The Skywarn net reported twin twisters SE of me, sourced to State Police, and multiple public reports of another NW of me, straddling me on either side about 3 miles away.

When the third report came in, WSW of me about 5 miles off, coming right at me that was it, time to bail. I had already warned my neighbor and we both jumped in our cars and drove like madmen to a freeway overpass about a mile east. We parked underneath and ran to the upstream side to look out to the west and right then the county sirens went off signalling a tornado warning.

We could see a wall of darker clouds with a lot of lightning, and then a Sheriff's car pulled under the bridge and motioned us down. We ran down the ramp to his passenger window and he wanted us to leave since this was the major east-west road through town and our cars were blcking a lane. He said the storms were past us, and that they had knocked out the countywide emergency services radio network, for fire, police and ambulance.

I asked if he was sure, and being pretty tense since the radio was out and he and his girlfriend were cut off, he got kind of testy and said "What do you want, a guarantee?"

I said "Hell yes, I live in a trailer, and I want a guarantee." He got really mad and started to say something I'm sure I wouldn't have liked, when his radio spit out a burst of static and he reached down to fiddle with the knobs or something.

Right then lightning hit a huge freeway sign mounted on the edge of the bridge direcly over our heads and exploded the mercury vapor lamps that illuminated the sign, showering us with streams of orange sparks while a deafening boom rocked our whole universe.

He just punched it and took off in hs car while we ran up the ramp and got up on the shelf between the girders. I was only wearing a pair of cut-off shorts and sneakers, no shirt and the wind came howling through underneath the bridge carrying orange fire and sparks from the signlights and leaves and trash.

This was an eight lane bridge and the stuff was howling past horizontally, not reaching the ground even as it crossed under 8 freeway lanes. It was calm where I was, just a little gusty, but seeing the sparks shooting through I was afraid the entire metal bridge was electrified. No shirt and I was torn between wanting to squeeze up tighter in the safety of the girders and at the same time, afraid to touch them and possibly get electrocuted.

It was a lot like kneeling on the bank right beside a raging river in flood, looking down an see big pieces of limbs and stuff shooting past so close I could have reached down and let it blast my hand, but I didn't do that.

After a while it blew itself out and we came down and found a third guy had showed up at some point. My neighbor took him home and ran into golfball sized hail which tore the paint up on his Datsun 260Z. He wasn't overly appy about that.

Next day I went out to map the damage. From the west side of the city to the ENE every single tree in a quarter mile wide swath had been topped at 15 feet. Zig-zagging back and forth, working the damage path across the city you'd be fine in one block, everything normal, then in the next you'd have to weave around big branches blocking the road, then in the next there'd be piles of branches bigger than houses, and 3 and 4 foot diameter trees uprooted, with rootballs 10 of 15 feet laying everywhere, including on houses, then the next block lesser damage again and by the next block south, perfect again, like there'd never been a storm at all. This was just like a river, three blocks wide and more than 20 miles long.

I talked to some of the people along the way, and they all said their clocks stopped at 11:54 or 11:55, on either end of the swath. Twenty miles in less than a minute adds up to something well past the sound barrier, so I take that with a grain of salt, but still...you know it had to be moving up close to 200 mph or more to snap off 3 and 4 foot trees.

Over on the NE side of town the downburst had taken down a 650' tall freestanding radio antenna tower, just laid it over on the ground, crumpled like the skeleton of some huge dinosaur or something, better than 50 feet tall at the base, even on its side.

That was in a deep valley, and up on the ridge nearby I found the strangest thing. There was a tree with its branches wrapped totally around the trunk, one and a quarter turn. Below the branches the bark on the trunk was split around and around the trunk in a spiral pattern. It looked exactly like a dish towel after you wind it up to wring out the water.

Anyway, if you like to chase, you should look into your local Skywarn net, and also try a website called The Bearcage. If that doesn't come up, just search "storm chasers" on Google as there are many sites devoted to the activity.

Happy Trails.

:-)”

“Looks like about 5 active tornados right now, 1 near Detroit, 1 in Alabama, and 3 in Tennessee.

You can get recently updated text warnings here:

http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/nationalwarnings.html”

“lots of Americans ? as opposed to.....?

i loved that movie twister, i dont care what the critics say. im a sucker for disaster flicks. lots of americans flying around willy-nilly. i liked "the core", too.

you never hear about tornadoes in other countries. why is that? it must be a left-wing conspiracy. which leads me to the obvious conclusion that more guys named bubba die or are injured by tornadoes than guys named hanji.”

“post as soon as you can so we know you are ok, ok?”

“BpBaby's ok, the storms are all around her, but all she's getting is a little rain...tennis ball sized hail a few miles away.”

“wow.

Well, we're on the edge of the watch box 'til 5 AM... and Here comes the lightning.

Guess I better start thinking about unplugging this anti-god device for the night.”

“Well, we got a doozy in the middle of the night on this side of town Tilt. How did you fair?







Please stay safe you guys. Tornados bad. BTW, I love watching them too. What's the deal with being so fascinated with them, anyway?”

“I lucked out last night, got nothing but a hard rain. There was a tornado that touched down near my brother's house, I haven't heard from them, so I'm assuming all is well. Nasty storm came through Birch and Sass' area last night. Hope things are OK with them. I work in the same area, and it seems to be A-OK.”

“No major mishaps here. The only tree that could fall on the condo did so last Spring. At least I don't have to worry about that now!

I don't think we even got much rain over this way last night... just some lightning to the north.”

“No damage here. We got loads of hail and a terrified two year old, that's all. I think the tornados passed right over us. Birch loaded everyone up in our bathroom for a few minutes, and then all was clear. It's hard not being home at times like that.

I stood in front of my work for forty minutes last night watching the clouds spiral above. I've never seen anything like them. Erie stuff.”

“Yeah, that'd be us, over on the north(west) side of town. Let me tell you, it was a doozy. Just some lightning...lol!”

“I'll take the lightning over that baseball-sized hail Any Day.

(I hope I didn't just jinx myself!)”

“Well, there was some pretty serious wind and over an inch of rain too. All in all though, it was just a normal spring storm. I'll take that over hail and tornadoes any day.”

“Not sure we're done yet. The weather guessers are calling for supercells in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee today (Wednesday) too.

Last I heard the count stood at around 100 seperate twisters as of Tuesday morning, plus however many since then. IIRC the count from the April 1974 outbreak was 118 different tornadoes, so we have to be close to or past that now, with another day or more yet to go.

A storm that put down a tornado about 40 miles south of St. Louis showed up here around midnight, but was only packing wind, lightning and small hail. A pic is posted at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deepwilderness/

and some more in coming days if interested.”

“Did I say hail? Sorry, I didn't mean to jinx us.

I also found out that storm did have a tornado that touched down not far from here. Oops. Glad it wasn't any closer, we don't have a basement.”

“They say that twisters and divorce are a lot alike in Tennessee.

Before it's over someone is gonna loose a trailer.”

“Aha...... you do sound somewhat like me Jeffers!! lol... so where are you from? Mo? Tn? Il? I would have flipped out with that highway over/underpass experience!!!

I have a shot kinda like yours with the rain on the glass. I posted it on a photo forum, called it something like, "Then your world crashes," and a few people liked it... and couldn't figure out how it was done. LOL! (can you say, inside your vehicle, with no wipers running?? LOL)

Here's the shot

I checked your photos from your webpage. Niiiiiiiiiice! What kind of camera equipment do you carry backpacking?

Oh and to 2scoops. The closing scene from "Twister" was filmed here in Iowa. At first they were gonna destroy the big, ole white home, but they only did it on computer. Well, they did set up jet engines full of blasting power to pelt the home. LOL! I know, cuz it became a B & B. I visited it and did a Midwest travel story on it a few years back. Interestingly enough, the site was later hit by a twister and part of a roof tore off a mobile home there. (unless it was just for PR!!) Yes, I was right in the field by the exploding white fence and in the nasty barn with its nasty tools.

I did a story on Hollywood film sites in Iowa, which ran in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Scroll down to the subhead "Twister."

”

“Dang, try that once more:

"Twister" story here

Chili, how nerve-wracking for you!! Sure glad your kids were A-OK!”

“It was a tough day lizs. Fortunately, they were in no immediate risk of harm.”

“we had more last night, all around us....nobody hurt in the area but i had the boys in the closet....”

“Ummm....nevermind ; ) .”

“Still no word from stikmon??

We got lucky in southern Indiana again last night. Storms hooked to the north and broke up before they got to us.

For the second night they left damage across Illinois and Kentucky. No big ones, but we did have confirmed F2 twisters touch down in multiple locations.

We had a pretty awesome lightning show last night too. Wish I could have caught some on film.

Hope everyone is OK out there!”

“Stikmon is posting IJ, he's ok.”

“Skully -- there was a tornado in this area yesterday?? I don't follow the local news that closely sometimes.

Man, that was some Wall Of Water that came through about 5 PM...”

“Actually yes, yesterday in the wee hours there was a tornado in that "lightening show to the north". G00SE heard about it on the radio. Apparently it touched down near Clark Hill lake. I don't think there was much damage. We don't live far from there.

That wall of water yesterday evening had hail in it here.”