Experiencing The Tornado

My Top 3

Thursday evening, after returning from Heartstrings support group, I thought I was settling down for the evening. On the drive home, I experienced some moments of rain but nothing to be concerned about. However, about an hour later, around 10:30pm or so, thunder and lightening began to appear in increasing intensity. I was not terribly concerned as to me this was typically usual of summer like storms with short intense bouts of rain and thunder followed by normal weather conditions.

However, Mother was getting agitated; she was thinking that this was a prelude to a tornado. I thought she was overreacting but I decided to get the flashlights out as a way to allay some of her fears. Turns out she was prescient as the power decided to go out several times in a few minutes. Just a few seconds at a time but more than enough to give me concerns.

So I decided to check the local weather television channel for WXII news. That turned out to be a problem as my cable connection was lost. I had no idea what was going on. However, I still had an internet connection so I went onto the WXII.com site for their streaming weather report. Seems that several storm cells were popping up around the Triad including a real bad on in northwest Guildford county. This was truly a weather event in the parlance of the newcasters. A tornado definitely was doing some damage in the area.

From the commentary, I found out that Davie county was also experiencing tornado weather conditions. So for nearly an hour, I monitored the situation but it seemed that the worst of it had already passed us by so I went to bed with a certain sense of relief.

Then I went outside the following morning.

It is not everyday that a neighbour’s trampoline ends up in your back yard but there it was leaning against fence looking very massive. It was about 13 feet in diameter but looked bigger. The neighbour, to which this trampoline belonged did not bother to anchor it into the ground probably thinking it was too heavy to move. He obviously thought wrong with the winds as powerful as they were had no problem lifting it up and rolling it down two open backyards. Despite having a solid fence, the trampoline was an irresistible force that would not be stopped so it crashed through my fence and coming to rest against my cypresses.

Man, it looked big.

So I took a few photos of the trampoline and the damaged fence and went over to the neighbour’s to discuss the situation. They knew what had happened. As it was , I had to go to work so I left my father in charge of the matter. A little while later, the neighbours came over and started to dismantle the trampoline. It was agreed that they would handle the repairs to the fence which was not too bad; three planks and a rail were to be replaced along with some contouring of the planks to follow the design of the fence. It was an equitable solution considering that hiring a contractor to fix the fence would cost about $200-300 just for the section of fence.

Surveying the neighbourhood over the next two days revealed only minimum damage. Some down downed trees and blown items like trampolines. Saw worst in my drive into Greensboro around the Farmers’ Market.

If anything else that is taken from this experience is that my parents know what it is like being around when a tornado happens.

More photos of the damage can be seen on the Flickr page.