Stormy Night

Last evening we had some nasty storms roll through. They were the tail end of severe storms which spawned several tornadoes in the southern states. These tornadoes resulted in several deaths... and although we were in the risk zone for severe storms, our local weather forecasters thought we'd miss out on much of the action. Boy or boy, were they wrong!

Around 7:30pm we started hearing reports of a thunderstorm approaching our area. Within about half an hour a tornado warning was issued. Emile was with her boyfriend, Matt. His dad is an EMT and had gotten off work a short time earlier. He was being called back in because of the report of a tornado on the ground about a half hour from here. At about that time I looked at the local news station and they confirmed a *doppler indicated* possible tornado on the ground. I decided it was time to go to the basement with Brie. We weren't down there 2 minutes before the rain started pounding. We could hear some wind blowing around, but nothing out of the ordinary. After about 10 minutes we came back upstairs. Nothing looked out of place outside... even the plastic eggs were still hanging on the tree out front. Brie got back on her computer and started telling me about reports of the West Manchester Mall collapsing because of a tornado. I thought it had to be untrue. The mall is only 5 minutes from here. We hadn't heard a thing, not the typical "freight train" or sirens; nothing at all. I was proven wrong.

 

These aren't the best pictures, however, you get the idea. I had to pick Em up because she had gotten one of her headaches so we were detoured and ended up driving past the mall. The entire building was dark. You couldn't really see if there was damage or not. You could see lots of emergency workers though. By the next morning there was no doubt what had happened.It turns out a tornado had touched down. It was an EF0. Nothing compared to the EF4 that hit other areas. No one was injured in our area. Just some property damage.Last night we couldn't get home on this road. Now I understand why. The power poles were completely knocked over. There were wires on the roadway at Derry Park.Bleachers were rolled over like nothing at all. This is the home field (Derry Park) for Brie's softball team.

Again, thankfully no one was hurt. You never can tell what Mother Nature has in store, can you?