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...
I luv Hibiscus. When I was in elementary school, my mother used to take me to Tropical islands for summer vacations, and Hibiscus was the one I remembered the most. For a kid, the flower looked BIG & Beautiful! lol. When I think of Guam, I think of plumeria & bougainvillea more but hibiscus has been my most fav. Tropical Flower. Now, of course, we don't have those beautiful flowers here BUT I was very surprised that they SELL these flowers here! I even saw a lady buying a couple of pots of hibiscus at the grocery store where I was. I couldn't resist to take some pictures. And these are the ones. I'm also adding the yellow one which I took a picture at my friends' house a couple of days ago. I know, they aren't by the beach... oh well... Red hibiscus was the first one to remember from my childhood but aren't they all so pretty?? :-)
