My God, what a night. Tornado.
02-04-2007, 12:40 AM
#1
Foghorn Leghorn
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: I reside in a near constant state of amazment.
Posts: 2,923
My God, what a night. Tornado.
I realize that this may not be the proper forum for this but I beg your indulgence.
Friday morning about 3:45, my 3 year old woke me up out of a dead sleep to let me know that she was scared of the "boom booms". AKA, lightning. I drug her up into the bed and started to drift back to sleep when I heard the train.
Reflecting on it now, I knew instinctively what the sound was. But I couldn't believe it. Precious seconds ticked by while I listened to it coming.
Finally, as if shot with a cattle prod I sprung out of bed, grabbed the baby and sounding the alarm at the top of my voice and I ran for the "safe-room". I see the dogs silhouetted by the lightning on the back porch. Necessarily ignoring their plight, I get as far as the kitchen when I find myself standing in front several plate glass windows, sliding glass doors and the storm now directly overhead. A voice in my head screams, "Get down". I do just that shielding my child as best I can with my body fully expecting the windows and doors to shower us with shards of glass at any moment.
Being not an overly religious, yet a God fearing man, I found myself shouting out a prayer asking God to keep my family safe. I also lamented very loudly about my dogs being completely exposed and much more at the mercy of the storm.
The howling of the wind is unbelievable and reverberates through you. You shake down to your very soul. I hear the explosions of 100-year-old live oak trees amid the fury.
Finally my wife, who occasionally sleeps in our spare bedroom; she says I snore but I find that difficult to believe, comes stumbling out of the back bedroom asking "What is it?"
"Tornado" I scream! She dashes toward my older daughters bedroom.
The storm ends as quickly as it begins. Mercifully, we have been spared. Of course all of this happens in much less time than it takes to type or read of this account. My best guess as to the length of time from the time I first heard the train until it had passed completely is about 45 seconds.
After performing a health and welfare check on my family, I turn my attentions toward my two beloved labs, Fudge and Lucy. Upon opening the sliding glass doors and I hear them outside the screened in porch frantically prancing around. I open the screen door and they nearly plow me over getting inside. They are both just fine. Terribly excited, but fine.
At this point I would like to tell you of a particularly useful piece of equipment. For Christmas, my brother-in-law gave us an LED. flashlight that plugs into a wall socket. When you plug it in, the lights turn off. When power goes out, the flashlight comes on. Of course the power is knocked out immediately and this flashlight worked just as designed. No stumbling around looking for a flashlight.
We quickly light candles. I grab the LED flashlight and head outside to survey the damage of my 2.5 acre slice of heaven. I stand in disbelief. Slack-jawed and blinking I gaze upon what were huge live oak trees, wild cherry trees, water oaks, podacarpous, cedar, and plum trees. Knotted up like a rag dolls hair, the trees block the passage to two of my neighbor’s houses. I quickly survey my homes immediate surroundings. Finding nothing particularly untoward, I head toward my third neighbors house. I hear them outside and we call to each other and verify that nobody is hurt. I soon make contact with all the neighbors and nobody is hurt. Thank you Jesus. On bended knee, I thank You.
Daylight brings a harsh reality. The world we went to bed in, is not the world we wake up to. A majority of my two and a half acres are trees. Ranging in size from massive to small. Many, many have been hurled to the ground. Among those left standing, few do not show signs of the storms wrath. I immediately see many hours with the chain saw in my future. However, joy of joys, not so much as a shingle is out of place on my home. Huzzah!!
I walk the neighborhood and I shudder. A seemingly sound, cinderblock home, less than 250 yard from ours has exploded. There are portions of two exterior and a couple of interior walls remaining but everything else is gone. The debris pile around the house is surprisingly small. Most debris was sucked up into the maelstrom and hurled God knows where.
My neighbor, a wonderful old man named Al, has had his shop destroyed. A 39 Ford with a 2-speed rear end has taken a pretty serious hole to the deck lid. His 62 Mercedes coupe that he had been restoring has taken a fatal blow from a large I-beam. And perhaps the saddest of all, his all-original, low mileage 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix, 455 4-speed is buried beneath mounds of cinderblock, steel and trees. Gotta wait for the insurance company to lay eyes on before we try to recover it.
One fellow had one of those Quonset hut shops with the real deep ridges. The type the make the claim to be fireproof and good in up to 200mph winds. Well mister, I am here to tell you, it looked like somebody had wadded up a piece of tin foil and tossed it back to the ground.
Every house on that street is unfit for habitation now. One block away, you never would know the storm even occurred.
Thus far, I have fulfilled the prophecy of my time with the chain saw and watched the power company crew replace two huge power poles that were shattered like match sticks. We even had the big cement power poles slammed to the ground. I mean, these things are 3 feet in diameter of solid concrete and they are broken off like it took no more effort than water rolling off a ducks back.
It is difficult to grasp the enormity of the situation. In the cosmic scheme of things, I realize that this ain't that big a deal. But for those poor, miserable families who have lost loved ones, or have been cleaned out, this will prove to be a seminal moment in their lives. Of that, you can be assured. A 17-year-old girl, crushed in her bed by the branch of an oak tree. A baby found floating in a pond. The parents and 1 of the triplets killed. A father and son found dead in each other’s arms. The stories of heartbreak and misery are overwhelming and numerous.
After taking all of this in, and processing all of these accounts, I keep coming back to the notion, that there, but for the grace and mercy of God in Heaven, go I.
For those of you who don't know, it doesn't sound, "sorta" like a train. It doesn't sound "a little bit like a train". IT SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE A TRAIN! If you hear the train getting closer and you don't live next to the tracks, MOVE YOUR ***!!
Friday morning about 3:45, my 3 year old woke me up out of a dead sleep to let me know that she was scared of the "boom booms". AKA, lightning. I drug her up into the bed and started to drift back to sleep when I heard the train.
Reflecting on it now, I knew instinctively what the sound was. But I couldn't believe it. Precious seconds ticked by while I listened to it coming.
Finally, as if shot with a cattle prod I sprung out of bed, grabbed the baby and sounding the alarm at the top of my voice and I ran for the "safe-room". I see the dogs silhouetted by the lightning on the back porch. Necessarily ignoring their plight, I get as far as the kitchen when I find myself standing in front several plate glass windows, sliding glass doors and the storm now directly overhead. A voice in my head screams, "Get down". I do just that shielding my child as best I can with my body fully expecting the windows and doors to shower us with shards of glass at any moment.
Being not an overly religious, yet a God fearing man, I found myself shouting out a prayer asking God to keep my family safe. I also lamented very loudly about my dogs being completely exposed and much more at the mercy of the storm.
The howling of the wind is unbelievable and reverberates through you. You shake down to your very soul. I hear the explosions of 100-year-old live oak trees amid the fury.
Finally my wife, who occasionally sleeps in our spare bedroom; she says I snore but I find that difficult to believe, comes stumbling out of the back bedroom asking "What is it?"
"Tornado" I scream! She dashes toward my older daughters bedroom.
The storm ends as quickly as it begins. Mercifully, we have been spared. Of course all of this happens in much less time than it takes to type or read of this account. My best guess as to the length of time from the time I first heard the train until it had passed completely is about 45 seconds.
After performing a health and welfare check on my family, I turn my attentions toward my two beloved labs, Fudge and Lucy. Upon opening the sliding glass doors and I hear them outside the screened in porch frantically prancing around. I open the screen door and they nearly plow me over getting inside. They are both just fine. Terribly excited, but fine.
At this point I would like to tell you of a particularly useful piece of equipment. For Christmas, my brother-in-law gave us an LED. flashlight that plugs into a wall socket. When you plug it in, the lights turn off. When power goes out, the flashlight comes on. Of course the power is knocked out immediately and this flashlight worked just as designed. No stumbling around looking for a flashlight.
We quickly light candles. I grab the LED flashlight and head outside to survey the damage of my 2.5 acre slice of heaven. I stand in disbelief. Slack-jawed and blinking I gaze upon what were huge live oak trees, wild cherry trees, water oaks, podacarpous, cedar, and plum trees. Knotted up like a rag dolls hair, the trees block the passage to two of my neighbor’s houses. I quickly survey my homes immediate surroundings. Finding nothing particularly untoward, I head toward my third neighbors house. I hear them outside and we call to each other and verify that nobody is hurt. I soon make contact with all the neighbors and nobody is hurt. Thank you Jesus. On bended knee, I thank You.
Daylight brings a harsh reality. The world we went to bed in, is not the world we wake up to. A majority of my two and a half acres are trees. Ranging in size from massive to small. Many, many have been hurled to the ground. Among those left standing, few do not show signs of the storms wrath. I immediately see many hours with the chain saw in my future. However, joy of joys, not so much as a shingle is out of place on my home. Huzzah!!
I walk the neighborhood and I shudder. A seemingly sound, cinderblock home, less than 250 yard from ours has exploded. There are portions of two exterior and a couple of interior walls remaining but everything else is gone. The debris pile around the house is surprisingly small. Most debris was sucked up into the maelstrom and hurled God knows where.
My neighbor, a wonderful old man named Al, has had his shop destroyed. A 39 Ford with a 2-speed rear end has taken a pretty serious hole to the deck lid. His 62 Mercedes coupe that he had been restoring has taken a fatal blow from a large I-beam. And perhaps the saddest of all, his all-original, low mileage 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix, 455 4-speed is buried beneath mounds of cinderblock, steel and trees. Gotta wait for the insurance company to lay eyes on before we try to recover it.
One fellow had one of those Quonset hut shops with the real deep ridges. The type the make the claim to be fireproof and good in up to 200mph winds. Well mister, I am here to tell you, it looked like somebody had wadded up a piece of tin foil and tossed it back to the ground.
Every house on that street is unfit for habitation now. One block away, you never would know the storm even occurred.
Thus far, I have fulfilled the prophecy of my time with the chain saw and watched the power company crew replace two huge power poles that were shattered like match sticks. We even had the big cement power poles slammed to the ground. I mean, these things are 3 feet in diameter of solid concrete and they are broken off like it took no more effort than water rolling off a ducks back.
It is difficult to grasp the enormity of the situation. In the cosmic scheme of things, I realize that this ain't that big a deal. But for those poor, miserable families who have lost loved ones, or have been cleaned out, this will prove to be a seminal moment in their lives. Of that, you can be assured. A 17-year-old girl, crushed in her bed by the branch of an oak tree. A baby found floating in a pond. The parents and 1 of the triplets killed. A father and son found dead in each other’s arms. The stories of heartbreak and misery are overwhelming and numerous.
After taking all of this in, and processing all of these accounts, I keep coming back to the notion, that there, but for the grace and mercy of God in Heaven, go I.
For those of you who don't know, it doesn't sound, "sorta" like a train. It doesn't sound "a little bit like a train". IT SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE A TRAIN! If you hear the train getting closer and you don't live next to the tracks, MOVE YOUR ***!!
-Jon
02-04-2007, 02:38 AM
#5
5th Gear Member
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Texas
Posts: 2,170
RE: My God, what a night.
im glad to hear that you and your family are alright. when you think about it it really is amazing the sheer power that storms like that have. good luck with the work ahead of you.
02-04-2007, 10:31 AM
#9
6th Gear Member
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Citrus County, FL
Posts: 8,007
RE: My God, what a night.
yeah man, good deal on being safe. where exactly do you live? im in citrus county and was up till about 1:30 watching the news as they were showing "what could be tornados" circled EXACTLY over my neighborhood (this was at about 12:30). luckily nothing touched down here and we were safe. My wife was working the night shift in Belleview which is not that far at all from the villages which got hammered very badly. again, she (and the 06GT were spared) I have weathered the hurricanes right along with ya, i know the crap you have had to deal with. all i can say is FLORIDA SUCKS