Thursday, May 01, 2008

Another tornado

Was working late today when the roof on the office building began rumbling. At first it was just a few thumps, then more, more and way more ... until the hailstones pounding the ceiling sounded like a full-tilt boogie drum solo.

At the first break in the torrent of rain and hail, I ran out to the parking lot to leave. The place awas littered with almost golf ball sized hail stones.





This weird cloud was rotating as it passed overhead.


You can't see it very well in this cellphone camera image, but there were a couple of twisty clouds inside that dusty wedge. One of them turned downward and became a tornado about five minutes and three miles or so east and north of this.

Maybe this is Nature's way of saying, enough is enough. Come home and work on the blog instead.

10 comments:

Scaryl said...

Hello. :)

That must have been quite scary. We don't have tornados in Estonia but we've had hail like that a couple of times. It was in summer and it ruined all the flowers.

TerriRainer said...

Don,

You beat me to posting my own hail picture!

That storm was CRAZY! It formed SOOOOO fast. I put a link to this post on my post about last night, since you had way cooler pics.

And, yes....you must post MORE!

:) Terri

bindhiya said...

Dear Skeeter,
Hope you having a good day!
That was scary...
we had a hail Strom last year...I had still those pictures...I didn't even heard about hail Strom before...I went out to be in the rain...I didn't know am not supposed to be out :))
That last line put a smile...work on your blog :))
Have a great weekend!
♥ & ((hugs))
bindi

Suzanne said...

I'm here to make sure you're okay because I just heard on CNN about Arkansas. I didn't watch news yesterday so obviously I'm out of touch. I'm glad you're okay. However, I'm worried about Cecile and Bindi. When I saw the news report with all the tornadoes that reportedly touched down in Little Rock I felt an overwhelming panic. CNN uses red arrows to mark tornadoes and there were so many in Little Rock it looked like one huge red blob. I just got an update and the most recently posted video on CNN.com has the caption "Little Rock looks like war zone." I am so hopeful Bindi and Cece are okay. I have a very odd feeling with this one.

I'm so happy you're okay. One less person to worry about!!!

Love ya,
Suz XO

Eva said...

Wow. So glad you're okay! I am a bit freaked out just looking at that cloud picture. I've never seen a tornado in real life before, and I am quite certain that television screens do NOT do them justice. I'm guessing that the rule of thumb is GET AS FAR AWAY AS POSSIBLE.

Maria said...

I live in Nebraska, so am no stranger to vacuum clouds, funnel clouds and tornadoes. They all scare the hell out of me, especially when you see things like I did growing up in Iowa: our house was fine, but our neighbor's barn and car in the front yard were completely shattered and in bits, actually hanging out of trees.

It was like a giant's game of baseball. Hit and miss. Glad you are ok.

Leah said...

Those photos are just incredible. Yikes.

NouveauBlogger said...

Yikes! Hail damage on the car too?

Ron Simpson said...

I parked my car in the street, hoping for some of that golfball+ sized hail to come along and destroy it....I got full replacement coverage.
But alas, it was not to be. Not even a pea sized hailstone at the Simpson house.

CIELO said...

Oh how scary... oh! I'm glad you are OK.... and here I am: always complaining about this cold place I hate so much... but what's better? Guess there is no safe place on earth any more....

Missed you at the carnival.

Cielo