It was really scary. In this area, I've heard that a couple of small tornadoes touched down in the past (like in 40years) so it's not common, but it did today... I've been through earthquakes, SUPER TYPOON (wind gusts over 235mph!!) but NOT TORNADO, and I Don't Want to ADD Tornados to my natural disaster list!...:-( When I left the supermarket around 4:15PM, the temp. was still around 65F. When I was about 2 mins away from home, the BIG rain drop started to hit the car window. At least that's what i thought that was. When I arrived home, started to unload the groceries, hail started to fall.. I hurried up. As soon as I came inside, the HAIL started to fall like crazy!! I think it lasted for 5 mins?, and we got this size of hail on the pic. It's MY HAND and this SEASHELL shaped hail was 1.75" x 1.5". We had larger hails than other places nearby, according to the evening news. Then I heard the siren, and turned on the TV, and we had TORNADO WARNING in this area!! I looked outside once again, and it got even darker than before, and could see the funnel of clouds in the distance... I got really scared... the tornado touched down the ground about 10~15 mins. drive away, RIPPED off the roof & others from Hempfield High school, and several houses' 2nd floor were ripped off which were on its' way. Actually there are 2 circulations in one cloud on the rador at that time. In 20 mins apart, another Big cloud was coming from downtown Pittsburgh to this way, with Hails & POURING rain... And this air system is going to drop the temp. to 17F tomorrow morning...sigh... again, today was like 65F!!! I'm glad though that the tornado didn't ripped this house & me... I haven't heard anybody got killed but for a while, I heard & saw many amblance going up & down the nearby streets... Hope everybody was ok... I planned to post a CARD after my last post on Japan's earthquake but I didn't have a chance to finish the card today cuz of this unexpected event...
Update on 3/24/2011 The tornado was EF2, max. 120mph wind, 90 homes were damaged, 30 of them completly destroyed...
4 comments:
Glad that you are safe and sound! We had TONS of snow here! But I must remind myself that I'm blessed to be in my own home-safe and sound. Blessing to you and your Mom in Japan. I just posted two Japan-inspired cards. Maybe you like to see them? Sending hugs!
Goodness! The weather is sure crazy everywhere! We had storms, but luckily they were up north, and south of us, we lucked out here. I'm looking forward to warm weather, but afraid of the storms it may bring, last year we had some pretty bad storms.
OMG - would you look at the size of that hail. Several people who commented on my blog today told me of super cold weather and snow. Tornado warnings are always scarey - glad everyone is okay!
Hugs - Sandy
Glad you are safe! ;-)
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