On 6/13/2014 1:36 PM, Frank wrote:
On 6/13/2014 11:05 AM, George Shirley wrote:
On 6/13/2014 9:31 AM, songbird wrote:
a few days ago, could have been a tornado
skipping over, but others just say strong
winds, all i know is that it's not every
day you look out and realize the neighbor's
garage is gone. i've been through times
where the house was shaking before from
strong winds, but this time it was just wind
and rain from all directions at once (and a
calm eye for a moment), but no pressure change
so we were either off to one side or it didn't
form up until it was further north of us.

turns out it was two garages gone, other
another neighbor lost a bit of their roof,
one a few houses further down has a large tree
on top of it (a two and a half story house with
a large pine tree on top of it). more damage
to trees, tree lots, house with a brick wall
partially gone, another tree smashed someone's
car, garage door blown outwards, hmm... the
road to the north of us which runs EW looks
like a few hundred trees down.

our place, no damage other than a few small
things tipped over, but i'd just finished
24.5 pints of freezer jam that needed to go
in the fridge/freezer and it couldn't because
the power was out. so it's soupy freezer jam
now known as tornado jam.

the roof did not leak. i think.


songbird

Sounds like a "skipper," a tornado that doesn't touch the ground. We had
one drop the top of an oak tree on our roof many years ago. Scared the
hell out of us, including the dog. My folks home got hit by one in the
early seventies, just banged up the roof a bit. Skippers are fairly
common in the south. Glad your home didn't get hit.

George

Seen it happen here too in Delaware.

Also saw a tornado here. Son was driving us home and 2 miles from home
a tornado was taking out a school gym. Looked like the Wizard of Oz
with stuff flying through the air. We were only 200 yards away and it
was coming our way. I told my son to floor it and it never bothered us.
Besides the school gym, 6 houses lost roofs and siding. Police kept
cars out of the neighborhoods but the houses were not all together and
one I saw with out a roof while neighbors on half acre lots were untouched.

Saw a skipper too. Neighborhood a couple of miles away had many trees
felled and one house demolished but they did not call it a tornado.

I won't grow trees next to the house that will hurt the house if they
come down in a big wind.
Many years ago I was in the U.S. Navy, sailed on old WWII destroyers
that were still in use in the late fifties. Not uncommon to be sailing
the Caribbean Sea and see water spouts, often two or three in a row,
basically a tornado over water. Nice to see but didn't want to drive
into one.

Lived on the Gulf Coast most of my life and have seen many hurricanes,
lots of tornadoes spun off the front of the hurricane. Scary to see and
to be in. Got old and started running north to get away. Don't like big
storms of any kind anymore, to old to run and hide. Plus they mess up
our gardens. In Rita we lost a 400 year old white oak that was in the
front yard, luckily it hit the power line feeding our house when it went
down and that threw it in the front yard instead of on the house. Pretty
sure if it had hit the house dead on we would have gotten a new house
from Allstate. Lady down the street had a very large pine tree fall just
behind the peak of her roof, house looked fine from the street but the
back half was crushed completely.

Yeah, we try to avoid storms of any kind anymore and are careful to keep
our home and vehicle insurance at true value. Bought this house eighteen
months ago and just got the latest appraisal, had to up our homeowners
insurance quite a bit. The new ExxonMobil campus is going in a few miles
east of us, reckon that's what did it. 10,000 employees moving into the
area, buying houses, etc.

George