Quicksand Fans

Is everyone in that part of the country okay?

A concerned Katie …

Yeah, but who are all these little people? Who owns those ruby slippers?

Sorry. Not trying to minimize other's suffering but tornadoes have been blowing past me and mine for so long that the sirens don't even wake me up. Unless it's daytime and then I call Dave and stick the phone out the window so he can hear what he's missing. I honestly worry more about driving to work.

Hope everyone else is as fortunate.

I've never lived near tornados, though I believe one tore through my back garden a couple of years ago. Was washing up at the time and suddenly the wind picked up, then super hail, all of a sudden something dark ripped through the garden. Tore a straight line through the bushes and bit off our garage roof! Not quite sure what the hell it was. But we don't really get dangerous weather up here. We're on a plateau so no flooding, such a slow gradient that there are no mudslides, no hurricanes, no blizzards, never a drought, no earthquakes. It's all quite boring!

I've seen the devastation on the news. Good luck to anyone out there.

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living in illinoisl, tornadoes are a dime a dozen. With that said, it seems everyone has there problems to worry about, whether its hurricanes along the eastern seaboard to earthquakes along the west coast. My worst fear is the one day, one of these monster tornadoes will hit a major metropolitan area such as chicago, st. louis or dallas texas. One could only imagine the devastation that would be caused if an F5 tornado slammed into the heart of one of these cities

One example does not make a trend but this appears to have happened. A 16 story building was struck by an F5 in 1970, in Lubbock, TX. If a Wikipedia report can be trusted, the building survived but was heavily damaged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Lubbock_tornado

claykid wrote:living in illinoisl, tornadoes are a dime a dozen. With that said, it seems everyone has there problems to worry about, whether its hurricanes along the eastern seaboard to earthquakes along the west coast. My worst fear is the one day, one of these monster tornadoes will hit a major metropolitan area such as chicago, st. louis or dallas texas. One could only imagine the devastation that would be caused if an F5 tornado slammed into the heart of one of these cities

Fred588 wrote:One example does not make a trend but this appears to have happened. A 16 story building was struck by an F5 in 1970, in Lubbock, TX.

I lived in Lubbock for quite a few years in the 80's. Even then, the aftermath of this tornado was still seen.

And in Wichita Falls, which is about 45 minutes from where I live now, a major tornado outbreak happened in 1979. 42 people died in that tornado, and it leveled almost all of the south side of the city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Valley_Tornado_Outbreak

some more wikipedia fun, the last one to hit chicago was 1876, might think maybe their due, but i hope not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_to ... rge_cities

Been having some wild weather up here in NY also. Been raining a LOT for the last month, and now that we have hot & humid weather we're getting nasty storms too. Took down a barn and a bunch of trees in my home town out in Western NY- nobody killed, but a lot of damage.

Some wag at work commented during our last thunderstorm "If a tornado hits this building, there better be a freakin' yellow brick road outside afterwards."

Duncan Edwards wrote:Yeah, but who are all these little people? Who owns those ruby slippers?

Sorry. Not trying to minimize other's suffering but tornadoes have been blowing past me and mine for so long that the sirens don't even wake me up. Unless it's daytime and then I call Dave and stick the phone out the window so he can hear what he's missing. I honestly worry more about driving to work.

Hope everyone else is as fortunate.

A tornado outbreak in Middle Tennessee in 1998 got us a Discovery channel special that same year. Wikipedia mentions an F3 or F4 that touched down at Charlotte and 46th ave and I can tell you first person about that one. Some guy took my father's normal parking place about a block from that location that morning and got a big cedar tree on his car. I stood outside about a mile away and watched it take out WSMV on Knob Hill before hopping through West Nashville. Based solely on having seen her in Weatherman's composite series I was going to see Ashlyn Gere perform at a local gentlemen's club that night but it all got blown away. (Caught her later though ) There was an F5 just outside town to the southwest which made a serious mess of several rural locations. I've experienced several tornadoes in my life but that was the only time I've seen a big one go right through town like that.

Here's the F5 of that day - http://youtu.be/Xr6Ku7-c_GY

Here's the big one that went right through town - It was taken by the brave/insane people at WTVF. While not in the dead center of the storm they were close enough to make it very interesting. The best part to me begins about 5:45 as the downtown area is hit hard. You can see transformers exploding and the whole sky rotating. I'm behind the dead center of it a few miles back.

http://youtu.be/59m5zpEKNjk