Tornado in the area

[Guest guest]

A few days ago a severe thunderstorm passed through the area. At one point I was standing near the window watching the wind and rain, both of which were quite strong. All of a sudden it all stopped. From roaring and coming down in sheets to dead still and not a drop falling. This lasted maybe a minute and both started up again, the rain just as hard but the wind somewhat less.

No warnings or anything had come up aside from a severe thunderstorm warning. However, a tornado was spotted to the northeast of hear and it tracked on for a while.

The next day the newspaper said one had touched down about a mile from here. Later reports put it as being on the ground for more than 6 minutes and cutting through a couple of different neighborhoods, even crossing the main thoroughfare. This happened about the same time as the events described above.

Today I took a back route to do some errands. I could see where the tornado had touched down and then moved into the neighborhoods. From another main street I could see trees down here and there, one street completely blocked and with heavy equipment working on it. I didn't go all through the area, just down the main street. There were also a couple of damaged trees in a Civil War fort. There it crossed the main thoroughfare but didn't seem to have done any damage so maybe it picked up from the ground. Its lucky it did since that road tends to be very busy. The other places it went weren't anywhere I wanted to go since those were residential areas with no through access meaning I had no reason to be going up in there.

Fortunately the tornado was weak, F 0 or low F 1, meaning winds topping out around 80 to 90 MPH.

No pictures either since virtually everything of note was on people's houses and I dislike taking pictures of that kind of thing.