Kentucky peeps - Everyone OK?

here’s that K-Mart.

 

here is a photo of the four steel I-beams that held a large sign at the edge of the Bayliner boat dealership.

 

Saw my share of them growing up and spending my first 20 years in North Dakota. Some closer than I'd have liked, and some
from a relatively safe distance that were fascinating to watch as they dropped down from the sky. Always thought the people that
were out watching for them in the storms as part of the Emergency response crews were some crazy brave people. Mostly police types.
So we'd listen to them on a scanner.

When the sirens went off, the hairs on my neck always stood up.

My Mom was the absolute worst in those situations. She'd absolutely lose her shit in a severe storm. Just hunker down in a basement or other
more solid structured part of the house and wait it out. If it's going to happen...there's not shit you can do about it. She'd ball like a freakin' baby.
Never got that.....keeping your shit together is one key to making it through....losing your mind makes you absolutely useless.

We'd crack a couple windows, too....supposed to help when the outside air pressure and inside air pressure in the house change rapidly during one of those storms.

 

Yeah Louisville got lucky however Bowling Green got destroyed…Checked in with my cousin and friends there…Everyone OK however some lost everything..,

 

Holy crap, that's one of my customers.

 

I live in Edwardsville, IL which is where the Amazon warehouse was hit. The last number I saw was 6 dead. It’s almost like the tornado targeted that building because there was little damage to anything else.

 

We had a little one here in Upstate SC. Snapped one of my pines in half and luckily only caught the corner of my roof. Power lines are down but still hot in my driveway, so I can't get out.

 

We had some high winds last night but nothing we haven't had before. Pulled a few pieces of siding off the house and pushed my trailers around a little. Lost power for a few seconds but right back on, we were lucky there, still 5000 without power this morning.

Been watching the drone footage out of Kentucky, the power of mother nature is off the scale. Unbelievable what you see when you really start looking.

 

You have to keep your wits for sure... that’s why I said I won’t go where I can’t see the sky when it’s green so I can be ready... I did get in trouble a bit as a kid as I’d hide in hollowed tree trunks and watch storms when the family was looking for me

 

This is what I’m taking about. That’s what is so fascinating. Look at those beams and consider the force it takes to do that and then the Kmart is gone but the cars are sitting right in the parking lot. The forces that you feel do not compute. What is happening around you doesn’t match the other forces, it’s really like a suspension of the laws of physics in some areas and the unbelievable extreme show of them right beside them. I still think and ponder the many different facets of what I saw and felt that day.

 

Been close to a lot of them in my lifetime, but never in the direct path of one. I've personally helped friends clean up after at least 6, and seen for myself the crazy, illogical things that happen, along with first-hand accounts of what it was like. My hometown in IA was similarly flattened in 1860, by one of at least 3 tornados that killed 141 people in eastern IA and western IL. (Previously one of the worst in US history.)
I was there July of '20, standing on a covered porch watching branches and trees snap off during the derecho storm. I was fortunate to have cut down and majorly trimmed 14 trees the year before. Power out on in the entire town for 2 days, houses across the street took a full week to get power restored, due to the telephone company owning the 5 old poles that broke.

It's so bizzare to learn both what did, and did not happen, in any given area impacted by one! Praying for all who are dealing with the devastation, clean up, and loss of homes and loved ones.

 

So about 20 years ago now... it’s summer thunderstorm season when the temps between fronts vary 20 degrees or more. Pretty normal storm day. I had just moved into a new shop and was there working outside and watching the storm front roll in. The sky starts changing but all calm so far. Train tracks are a mile away, hear rumbling aways off. It gets stronger loud enough for me to look and I don’t see the train... Sky is orange and dull, no lightning or thunder. The rumble was a 4 coming into town moving slow, about 10 mph. It was big and wide, so wide I couldn’t make out the funnel as it was pushing debris clouds. The air feels odd, electrically charged, humidity is changing fast, pressure dropping. There was no basement close to me but my grandma has a basement 1/2 mile East, I call my family and tell them to get below ground, I tell the chick with me to get in the jeep... she gets in and I’m closing doors on the shop. Everything got really calm... so much that I stopped and looked, at that time in a calm feeling the jeep with the chick in it was rocking back and forth through the travel of the suspension, but there was no wind, like I said, doesn’t compute. To the west the debris is about 1/4 mile away in the nest field. The debris was a brick factory that it mowed through and a big church that it pulled up at its roots 1/2 mile away. I grab the chick and bring her inside where there was a 14k pound steel ocean fishing boat, I swear I threw her up and over the side, she was only 110lbs but still, I followed. I looked back and it seemed to calm a little so I got out to shut the big slider doors on the pole building, they’re 12’ tall and 10’ wide steel wrapped treated 4x6 post frame on tracks. I pull one side closed and grab the other. I see the jeep is rocking again looking like the tires are almost off the ground between rocks. As I’m pulling the huge door that you have to put your ass into to move normally, the door lifted, pulled off the bottom track with me holding the handles, I come off the ground and let go and drop down gently... I swear I only took two steps to get to the ocean boat but it was 40’ away. This is where it was so odd, I didn’t feel a vacuum, it wasn’t windy, I got in the boat and stood looking over the side, the chick was in the cabin. That door stayed perfectly parallel with the floor for at least two minutes. At first all calm, and silent, like all the sound waves were sucked away, you couldn’t hear all of the debris that was getting wrapped around the poles and electrical wires, like metal siding. Bricks dropping like hail, from the factory over a mile away. Then with the door still suspended, all hell broke loose, everything inside the building was flying, car body parts, motorcycle parts, everywhere swirling and slamming into walls, I’m watching through the cabin cubby window now. The boat starts to move towards to open door, the swirling stopped and a vacuum began, it got loud, so incredibly loud. Then like shutting off a sweeper, it all slowed calmly and I watched the door that I thought we were going to get sucked out of slowly and gently lower back down to close(don’t know why I was thinking about the door if it would’ve sucked the boat up it wouldn’t have used the door, me shutting it was useless too)

the boat had moved about ten feet, the buildings had shrapnel from everything stuck into and through it, poles and trees and wires down everywhere. It picked up scrap metal out of the back of a truck and stuck it completely through an enclosed trailers wall beside it. The jeep 20’ away didn’t have a scratch. The old factory was half gone, everyone safe, inside the storm shelter, the church was a cement slab with plumbing sticking up, it had lifted and went directly over my shop as it’s about 20’ below little hills. It stayed up for about 1/2 mile and dropped back down taking everything it touched for awhile. Missed my grandmas and family by 1/2 mile, I had to drive through fields to get there to check on them.

that’s my tornado story, so incredible, if it happens again, I want a safer spot to observe.

 

This is normal to us as before I was born there were the Palm Sun tornadoes kind of like what happened on KY, bunch of them on the ground for awhile. My grandpa, the same ones in the other story, lost his neighbors, sucked them up with their house, while his house was untouched. He lost his piper cub plane and his hanger at the airport, but nothing else. Lots died in that storm.

 

Meh, to be honest it’s no different than any other part of the country. I can’t think of one place in the US that doesn’t have some major drawbacks. This part happens to be tornados, humid as fuck summers, and very wet spring and fall weather. Other parts have hurricanes, earthquakes, insane winters, etc. And that’s just weather related. It’s all just a matter of what you’re willing to put up with. I will say that the one additional thing that makes tornados a bit worse here is houses around here typically don’t have basements because of the amount of rock in this part of the country and I’m guessing basements would be the most preferable place to get away from it.

 

Quite vivid posts you've offered.

Compliments on your witting!

 

Thank you very much! I’m always reluctant to post as I’m not confident in my ability to put experiences into words, probably why I use so many. That tornado I’ll never forget and taught me life lessons.

 

that's because generally... cold air is riding fronts or high pressure zones coming down from Canada and riding along dips in the jetstream, which generally means NW to SE direction, or W to E direction, in the middle of the country.

warm moist air systems ride up along the leading edge of those fronts, which means SW to NE as the front pushes across the country along the jetstream. the stronger the difference in pressures systems from high to low, and temp differences from cold to hot, the more abrupt and violent the weather becomes, and generally winds as well. that's why its more common to see them in the spring/summer when there's still cold air up north but hot ass air down south, and less common when the whole hemisphere is really cold.

this is why you always see the comma type shape, because its mimic'ing the front as it pushes thru, like so:



So see... blue with triangles means cold front, sweeping across the country NW to SE or W to Eish... the warm air is in front of it riding along the edge of the two areas of weather, from the South up North and pushing eastward as the front sweeps it East like if you dragged your arm across a work bench sweeping sawdust along as you move (which gives it the SW to NE type movement), and that's where all the disturbance forms. White lines are the wind lines. See them pushing the front West to East, and the warm air is moving from the gulf in a Northern direction, and then being sweeped kind of NE as its closer to the front. Where those two things converge, well...



Sorry, I used to wanna be a meteorologist when I was little, but that's the gist in simple terms. [/nerd]

 

Great info and I am aware, all the weather in the US moves in that direction normally... but tornadoes aren’t normal and hurricanes change direction all the time, but still have a general pattern, the tornadoes that come from side effects from hurricanes.... same thing, only that direction... I’ve never ever seen a tornado track any direction other than SW to NE... it just fascinates me.

It’s affected me so much that every house I build has a clear view to the SW... always, and a basement.

Was your natural jungle gym fun on the way to the beach? I love the forest after a storm.

 

They all spin the same direction too

did you want to chase storms or just have a job where you could be wrong often and still have a job? Haha

I wonder what the accuracy percentage is now compared to before modern tech...

 

I spent much of my youth in a county with 150 lakes... one of the coolest things ever to watch was a really small tornado turned water spout get dissipated into the lake... really cool especially as a kid.