My area of the world (northwest Alabama) is a nice breeding ground for tornados. I can’t tell you how many tornado warnings I’ve sat through in my basement, curled up in my covers with my favorite pillow, listening to the battery-powered radio for weather reports.
Last year, I was in Tuscaloosa when one ripped through the neighboring city of Northport. We drove by the Texaco and saw all the letters falling off.
This time, I was closer.
I’m home for Thanksgiving–it’s 11 AM on a Saturday morning and I am sleeping blissfully until a horrible noise wakes me up…our town’s tornado sirens.
We go in the basement. My sister wonders aloud about where the tornado is and I tell her not to worry because tornados miss our town every time.
They didn’t this time. Our neighborhood was almost hit. The tornado touched down not too far from it. A church is ruined…the high school’s gymnasium is wrecked, along with its drivers ed car and a loading truck…several businesses lost roofs and signs and windows…several people lost their homes or have some pretty serious damage.
I drove by the high school football coach’s house. Trees surround the house and cars–but nothing is damaged. A black-and-white striped umbrella lies in the yard.
No one was killed here…two people died in a neighboring community. I don’t know who yet, I could know them, they might be cousins of mine, who knows.
So it wasn’t my house. But it could’ve been. So many people have to sleep somewhere else tonight–a lot of business owners are probably worried–half the town is blacked out because of no power. I went to Pizza Hut (which had power) and looked left down the street and saw a gaping black hole where I usually see streetlights and restaurant signs.
It’s creepy. It’s scary. And it could’ve happened to me.
I’m a bit shaken up–I’ve never liked tornados–I’m extremely scared of them and have always taken them seriously–and now I think some people in my town will too.
Hey Nocturne, good to hear it missed you. I’ve lived with those warnings most of my life, and most of the time it means nothing. I hope your cousins are OK.
But once one did roll down the street right behind my house. Left us untouched and destroyed the apartment complex in the next lot. We were actually standing outside at the time. Not a thing one could do.
We had back-to-back tornadoes here in 1996, the “Thursday tornado” and the “Friday tornado”, and they’re still talking about it–nobody killed, wrecked a bunch of houses. The “Thursday” was a late evening “weak” F-1 tornado, which nevertheless busted up the Cantrell Street Jewel/Osco pretty good. So the following Friday afternoon, when it was time to set off the sirens again, everybody in town was so jumpy that they didn’t waste any time running for the basement. The rescue personnel said later that when they got to the flattened portion of the Home Park subdivision, they were fully expecting to see, basically, “bodies everywhere”, and you could have knocked them over with a feather when live people started crawling out from underneath the rubble.
I was in the basement with the dog both times.
I knew the Friday tornado was serious when I looked out the basement window and saw the shrub next to it FLATTEN, right down to the ground, whoom! just for a few seconds, and yep, that was when it was just finishing up over in the Home Park subdivision and was very kindly dropping a tire iron on our porch roof, before it moved on to the Catholic Convent and the used car dealer up on Pershing Road.
Not to be an ass, DDG, but as a witness to some of these things, I don’t find this terribly funny. I’ve seen the path of an F5 tornado just north of Tuscaloosa (and just south of your hometown, Nocturne, if you’ve seen it) and it looked like nuclear devastation. Even the foundations of houses were torn out of the earth. It looked like a giant plow had come through and tilled the earth for a half-mile swath. Trees torn to splinters, roads buckled and shattered, utter devastation. Believe me, when it’s serious, there’s no “going inside.” It’s “keep as low as you can, and pray that the tornado doesn’t tear you limb from limb where you sit.”
I’ve watched while a crane pulled cars from the inside of a grocery store. They were picked up like toys and thrown up and through the roof.
Glad you’re okay, Noc. Yesterday was pretty freaky as far as weather… Mr. Bobkitty and I are going out to the house site later to make sure everything is still there, since the path they were reporting took it right through our area.
I’d become pretty experienced with hurricanes growing up, but had my first experience with a tornado relatively recently. When all was said and done, all we knew was it had touched down about 10 miles from our house; Mr. Bobkitty’s dad called us, totally freaked out, and said it had touched down a half-mile from our house. We didn’t even realize it. When we went out later, sure enough things were just in pieces right down the road. In a weird ironic twist (pardon the pun), it had skipped over the trailer park but had completely destroyed the lot about 100 yards away that sold trailers. Heh.
That was the same day a State Trooper’s car got nailed right outside our house. They were out there directing traffic, and a dumbass came whipping around the corner and hit the statie’s car head-on. We have some pretty impressive pics of that. Luckily no one was hurt. The woman driving didn’t even realize a tornado had just come through- she was on her way to, of all places, the liquor store. :rolleyes: We did wind up with a wheel (not a hubcap- a WHEEL) in our front yard- the trooper was most pleased when we returned it.
Glad we’ve designed a reinforced bunker into the house plans.
We had no warning on that one and being inside wouldn’t have made a squat’s worth of difference if it had come our way. If it had hit my house with us inside we’d likely have wound up hamburger.
It was ~5:00 AM and we’d been up all night and had just pulled in my driveway and were getting out of the car when the apartments exploded. We didn’t realize it was a tornado until it moved a bit away and we could make out the funnel. What I meant to convey was that fate, luck, circumstance, whatever let abject horror travel past us 50 yards away while leaving us unharmed, and no action on our part could have affected whether we became part of the tragedy or not.
Ogre, I saw that devastation you’re talking about. Sobering as hell, too.
What’s weird is that last week, two kids near here were killed in a drunk driving accident. A lot of people in the area were upset; these two children were the nicest, smartest kids around and had made a fatal mistake. One mother, trying to console her son, told him, “I’m sorry about your friends. My class graduated without 40 people.”
The reason her class graduated without forty people was because a killer tornado (F4 or F5, and I think the latter) touched down in that community and killed lots of people and ruined the lives of many others.
I know hurricanes are nothing to laugh about, but tornados scare me worse. At least one usually has SOME warning about a hurricane. Tornados are different; I didn’t even know one had touched down until my best friend called to make sure we were all right because the tornado had wreaked havoc RIGHT BESIDE our house.
I am very happy and relieved to hear you and your family are ok, Nocturne. We live in Leeds, and tornadoes were seemingly coming at us from every direction. One hit in Springville, which isn’t far at all.
My daughter was spending the day with a friend yesterday when the weather got really horrendous. I, like you, normally don’t get overly anxious,(unless it gets really freaky) and went about my business. The weather around here really wasn’t that bad, just gloomy and rainy.
However, Mr.Silky was avidly watching the weather news, and found out one was heading directly to where our daughter was staying. He started mildly flipping out, and I immediately got on the phone to make sure they were alright. They were, but were heading to the basement. A tornado touched down about two miles from that house.
We left to go get her as soon as the warnings let up, which was less than twenty minutes later.
Tornadoes are a tragic part of life here in Alabama, but one we should never get “used to”. Seeing how that F-5 shattered the western part of a few Birmingham communities back in 1998 gave me a wakeup call.
Nocturne, I’m glad you’re OK. Tornadoes are terrifying to me, and frequently crop up in my dreams as nightmares. Up until recently, I was in the same tornado belt you’re in (N. MSPI). Tornadoes have taken out a neighboring house, and in the past, I’ve hunkered down while two passed within 3 miles of my house. It’s terrifying, and as most southern houses don’t have basements, ya really are at the mercy of the elements.
