They just reported a tornado on the ground about 50 miles southwest of us, and the storm is headed our way right now. The tornado sirens already went off once, and then stopped again. Usually, the storms seem to split and go either north or south of us here; but you never knnow what a tornado will do. They said it will be coming into the Huntsville area in the next half hour. Unless we lose power and internet, I will keep everyone posted about how we are doing.
I pray you'll be missed by it. As you know, the chances are that you will be. I don't think I've seen a tornado since I've been in Maine but I saw a lot of them growing up in Michigan but, since it was a rural area, the tornadoes seldom touched down on anyone's house.
It looks like it has calmed down about the time that it went past us; so thank you for the prayers, and to God for answering our prayers, @Ken Anderson . The storm is still just east of us, but they said they don't expect another tornado from it. However........ We learned something very important from this experience ! As soon as the storm got close, the new satellite dish lost reception with the satellite, and totally froze up . Thankfully, we had that antenna that Bobby installed a few weeks ago; so we switched over to the antenna, and were once again able to get the local stations. I guess this might be an important consideration for @Diane Lane , too, since she lives where they have the hurricanes, which might also affect either cable or satellite reception.
One of the few arguments that I can remember my parents having in front of me had to do with a tornado. Mom wanted everyone in the cellar during a tornado, while dad was more nonchalant about them. He had lived there since he was four, and never saw a tornado touch down on anyone's house. So he'd have us outside watching the tornado, while mom would want everyone on the cellar. One weekend, my cousins and I were going to camp out in the woods. The news was warning of tornadoes so mom wanted to cancel those plans, while dad said he couldn't lock us in the cellar all summer. We ended up camping out, but not before there was an argument over it.
I've been through a few tornados earlier in life and Yvonne and I went through a good one in Harvest, Al. An F-3 or 4 ........they still haven't decided which but it's the same set of super cells that leveled Joplin. We went without power for about two weeks and the destruction on all sides of us was indeed great. No one died, at least not in Harvest but that said one of the biggest tragedies of any storm or disaster are the eventual lookie-loos and pilferers that seem to hover around someone else's losses like a fly over cow dung. The city of Harvest had to put a 7:00pm curfew on all travel inside the disaster area in order to run off the spoilers. If you didn't live there you were not allowed in and if you lived there you needed to be in your own residence or go to jail under suspicion. Well dern, no other excitement other than the Post horns going off. I put on my jeans, suspenders and a sweater and even decided to don clean underwear for what? A lot of rain. Truly, I am not disappointed, for indeed I hate to see people hurt either physically or with personal loss. Prayer does goes a long long way.........straight to the Father. Thanks @Ken Anderson.
We always loved being out and watching the storms, too; both Bobby and I would enjoy seeing the storms coming in and passing over. For some reason, they seem to take the same path through this area; but split up just as they get to Redstone Arsenal, and go either north or south of us here. I kid Robin that the military has an invisible "bubble" over the arsenal, and we live just outside of the gates. The time that we did actually have the tornado, we were living in a different area of Huntsville, and right in the path. There were actually tornadoes in the outlying areas of Huntville most of the day, and the first one took the roof off of our house. We hid out in the basement (which flooded since the roof was gone) as the rest of the tornadoes came through, and the whole area was pretty devastated. There was no power for around a week or so, all over Huntsville. It was an interesting time. PS I guess that Bobby and I were on the same wavelength this time !
Everything seems to be alright. Only 20% chance of rain today and it's supposed to be a beautiful day. Funny thing last night though. During any storm we like to track the thing on the TV. When we had cable it would inevitably go out as the storm system progressed. We were getting ready to cancel the service anyway and Yvonne's daughter found a special at Sam's for satellite so, long story short we got Direct TV. But, during the storm last night the Direct TV went out leaving us with nothing to track the storm with except for the $30+ antenna I put up last month. That thing brought in the best uninterrupted picture we have seen in nearly all of our storm tracking time. From the. experience I am going to check into solar packs for the TV and the Antenna. So much for technology.
We've had several F-1 and straight line winds this year here in Florida. With most of Florida being so flat, these storms can hit anywhere, at anytime. We get a lot of coverage and warnings, but I still keep an emergency radio, the type you wind up, on hand. Most of our power lines are underground, so losing power means something real serious is going on.
I've had a few close calls in the Midwest but here in Fresno if the winds are 20mph we get warnings, only thing to worry about here are earthquakes and I don't worry about them.
Those threats are so scary, especially if you don't have a basement or storm shelter! You're supposed to go to SE corner of house, right? ... away from windows,doors
I think that we are told to go to an interior room with no windows. For us, that would be a closet, probably in the middle bedroom that we use as a pantry/storage area, since that is the most sheltered room. The storms almost always come from the southwest, although the direction they are traveling can be either almost straight north or straight east. There seems to be a pathway that most of the storms follow when they come from the southwest, and they usually either go north of us or further south. Both Nashville and Birmingham seems to get a lot more storms, and worse ones, than we get here in Huntsville.
I'm glad y'all are o.k. I follow some storm trackers on Twitter, but wasn't on last night to see the posts, although I saw some pretty amazing pics/videos on there earlier. I'm hoping my old antennas will serve me for a bit once I cut off the cable. That's one reason I've kept it so long, because it doesn't go out when there are storms, unlike DirecTV, which totally cut out before Hurricane Ike even hit, and that was up in Houston proper. The next town over has buried electric and cable lines, and I wish this area did. Not only for storm outages, but because I love taking bird pics, and it seems every time I take them and get them uploaded, there's one or more ugly wires hanging in the background. Speaking of storms and Maine, @Ken Anderson were you in Maine when Hurricane Bob hit? I was up in the Portland area at the time, stuck in a little motel, with water pouring in the windows, ugh. I feel somewhat safe here, just out of superstition, because the house next door was clipped by a tornado before I moved here. When I moved in, the damage was still there. The owner didn't bother fixing it for years, and racoons moved into the attic through the holes in the roof/siding. There was water damage, but he sold the property as was, and the new (current) owner did minimal repairs, slapped on some new paint and called it a day. I'm hearing rumbling, and storms are moving in, but hopefully nothing too severe. Stay safe, y'all!
Where my son lives in Illinois gets them but the boy next door went to college to become a meteorologist. He told my son that where there house is they will most likely never be in the path of one. Something to do with the weather patterns.
No, I was in Texas in 1991. In more than twenty years near the Gulf of Mexico, we only had one hurricane -- Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 -- and the bulk of it hit Mexico. They evacuated the cities along the coast and there was some damage, but no lives lost in Texas from it. I was standing outside the fire station when someone's metal roof went flying past us, so it could have happened.