08/19/05:

RELATIVITY.

Hi, I just got in... yes I saw/heard/experienced the damn thing. We had minimal damage, but lots of our neighbors and some of my co-workers lost their homes or had major damage. I was sitting on the front porch watching the swirling clouds and thinking how strange it was that there was no wind down on the ground. In fact, I had walked out onto the front lawn to get a better view. Then I went back up on the porch and sat down on the steps. A few minutes later the wind came out of nowhere (no rain whatsoever at that point), pieces of paper, cardboard, chunks of fluffy stuff (like insulation maybe?) and other debris just started flying by and I heard a crash from inside the house. I jumped up and started for the door and a chair flew by and ended up in one of our trees on the front lawn. I ran inside and Bob was in the kitchen making dinner. I could see the tornado outside the kitchen window. The crash I heard was an upstairs window breaking. A piece of wood with some metal attached to it (looks like a piece of a 2x4 with a hanger attached) had come through one of the upstairs windows. We also lost a few pieces of siding. But we're all okay. We have no phone service and only intermittent electricity as of this morning. It must have damaged a cell phone tower because we can't get out on the cell phones either out there...

So wrote my friend Pat this morning from her office in Madison.

I had bolted out of bed when the radio came on this morning, reporting that "most of the damage was in the Williams Drive area of Stoughton." That's where Pat and her husband Bob live. I ran across the street to the gas station to buy a paper, and was immensely relieved to see that the path of the tornado, according to the newspaper graphic, was a little ways south of where my friends live.

I don't live far from Stoughton myself, and minutes after I had pulled into the driveway last night the tornado sirens went off. As I let myself into the house the phone was ringing and it was Klaus (who lives, auf course, just up the street). "Do you think we should go to the basement?" Klaus said.

"Uh, I think they said the tornado was up by Marshall, so it's going to miss us—"

At that point, I heard a strange rumbling through my kitchen window, off to the west. I have heard that sound before and have never liked it.

"Plan B in effect. Get to the basement now."

And in my basement, almost as if it was a bizarre demonstration of surround-sound speakers, the rumbling traveled from right to left, from one end of the cavernous space to the other. Then the sun came out, and it started pouring down rain. Within minutes, the reports started coming in from Stoughton and nearby areas. Emergency vehicles screamed by on the highway outside my house.

I can tell you the thing was huge. At least it looked that way from where I was. Preliminary reports were that it was an F4... It was pretty frightening. Right now I'm exhausted. I think I maybe got a few hours of sleep last night at most. Lots of heavy equipment rumbling by the house, sirens, etc. Then Bob had to get up early to go to Minneapolis. One of his sisters was in the hospital. She had cancer and wasn't expected to live long. She died about 7:30 this morning while he was on his way up there...

As the tornado sirens went off last night, I had just opened a letter from the municipality in which I live, ordering me to remove a sawed-up giant elm tree from my property within 30 days or to face a fine. Thing is, the municipality had sawed down the tree (to put in a sidewalk a couple of years ago) and then dumped the remnants in my yard, probably because I have a double lot and it was a huge tree. I was fuming. I was spitting fire. I couldn't believe how unfairly the municipality, and life in general, was treating me.

Then the sirens went off...

I have since reconsidered.

(Photo by Shivkumar L. Iyer, courtesy The Capital Times; graphic courtesy NOAA Storm Prediction Center)

Posted by Alois on