What a night tonight has been!

We have a front moving through with a nice chance of rain predicted (thanks Anne!) so not long after I started working again on the colony house it took to raining. Had a brief spell of precipitation then it petered out. Went for about an hour with nothing then roughly about a quarter till nine it took to raining again. This time it quickly went from scattered big drops to heavy shower to intense downpour.

Well, this made it kind of loud under the tin roof of the workshop but I didn't think anything of it beyond that until the wind started blowing. In something less than a minute it was blowing so hard that it was soaking me standing ten feet back from the eaves. Couldn't work like that so I grabbed up the power tools and took them into the shop proper to keep them dry. I'd just come back out to get my clamps when I heard the locomotive sound and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Now like a lot of folks I have the occasional recurring nightmare and the two themes common to them are tsunamis and tornadoes in the dark. I could hear it but had no idea where it was or what direction it was heading. The radio had been on the whole time so I knew there hadn't been a tornado warning but our twisters are short duration hit-and-run storms so oftentimes there isn't any. I also knew from back when my wife and I had taken the SkyWarn weather spotter training that the nearest National Weather Service radar was clear to Jacksonville which meant that the bottom of the beam would be at over a mile in altitude where we're at. That's one of the reason they wanted us weatherspotters because often times they can't see clearly what's going on this far west. What's more, I knew that my wife had the TV on for the baby to watch a video and might not hear what I was hearing.

I took off running through the wind and rain towards the house talking to the Creator all the way. I'm no kind of a runner and my boots weren't made for it. My doggone knee that I twisted the other day gave out on me and I fell on my face halfway to the house. Leapt to my feet again swearing this time and took off for the house again. By the time I got to the back door the train sound was gone. We've only been here about six months so now I'm not sure if it really was a tornado or just the sound of the wind howling through the shop bay at forty miles an hour. Reckon I'll never know for sure.

I'm not ashamed to say that it scared me spitless. Objectively the entire episode probably didn't last thirty seconds but I was working on reptilian cortex reaction time and it felt much longer. I shook myself out before I went in the door, gave the wife and baby a big hug and kiss, put on my hat and some rain gear and went back to the shop until I could get the rest of the adrenaline out of my system.

Damn, my knee hurts but I'll be going to be tonight knowing what I'm grateful for.

........Alan.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2002

Answers

Oh Alan, I feel for you! I cannot abide high winds. They were clocked at 70 !! mph this weekend in WV. The whistle through the trees is awesome in the truest sense. Better safe than sorry. Bet this brings some new safety rules to mind for you guys there. Like a weather radio?

Glad you made it and hope you rested well.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Wow pretty scarry huh Alan? I know what you mean about that wind business. Even tho my cabin is built to hold I still get real nervious in high winds. Also it does sound like of frieght train racing thru the pines around here too!.....kirk

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Probably that 30 seconds seemed like an eternity for you, Alan! Really scary! That might have been a tornado that just touched down for a few seconds and I've heard that they do sound like a freight train. Since it was dark, maybe it passed right by you and you didn't see it! Makes me glad I don't live in tornado territory :-)!

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Wow Alan, close call in all probability. That sound is unmistakable, having heard it once, I will always remember it. They roar whether they touch down or not. Went through last October and I am still touchy over it. Glad that all ended well and that your knee recovers soon.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Well, we did in fact have a tornado warning last night. If they announced it on our radio I must have missed it. Next payday I'll be buying two of the automatic type weather radios - one for the house and one for the shop. They're annoying as hell in the late summer because it seems like they go off non-stop but I'm mindful that the killer F3's that blew through Kissimmee-St. Cloud some years ago did their thing in March too. Come to think of it wasn't the Storm of the Century in March as well? In like a lion? Ha! More like in like a cheetah!

It was weird this morning. I was expecting to find leaves, twigs and branches all over the ground but there was remarkably little of any of it. The entire high wind episode probably didn't last thirty seconds so maybe it just didn't last long enough. If it really wasn't just the wind howling through the shop rafters I think it was a downburst and not a tornado. This would explain why it was so intense and short-lived. Probably never know for sure what it was.

Think I'm going to go buy one of those elastic braces for my knee this morning.

To: acem-emns@yahoogroups.com, CERTs@yahoogroups.com From: esatcom@co.alachua.fl.us Date sent: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 17:35:58 -0500 Subject: Emergency Management Notification Local Watch Outline : FL@ 3/12/02 5:35:57 PM

WWUS62 KMFL 122234 SLSFL

BULLETIN - IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED AREAL OUTLINE FOR TORNADO WATCH NUMBER 24 NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MIAMI FL 533 PM EST TUE MAR 12 2002

TORNADO WATCH NUMBER 24 IN EFFECT UNTIL 1100 PM EST.

IN FLORIDA THIS WATCH INCLUDES 20 COUNTIES

FLC003-019-031-089-130400-

IN NORTHEAST FLORIDA THIS WATCH INCLUDES 4 COUNTIES... BAKER CLAY DUVAL NASSAU

$$

FLC001-007-023-041-047-121-125-130400-

IN NORTHERN FLORIDA THIS WATCH INCLUDES 7 COUNTIES... ALACHUA BRADFORD COLUMBIA GILCHRIST HAMILTON SUWANNEE UNION

$$

FLC029-037-039-065-067-073-079-123-129-130400-

IN THE BIG BEND AREA OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA THIS WATCH INCLUDES 9 COUNTIES... DIXIE FRANKLIN GADSDEN JEFFERSON LAFAYETTE LEON MADISON TAYLOR WAKULLA

$$

WWWW

Emergency Management Notification System Office of Emegency Management A Division of Alachua County Fire/Rescue

Questions or comments should be directed to acem@co.alachua.fl.us

For more information visit our web site: www.alachua-em.org

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Alan, I feel for you man!!! We have had a tornado touch down here in the hills of SE Ohio right on our place, it was back in the year of the "floods" in 1996, I think ( gosh, my memory is BAD!!!)and I am just thnakful it missed the house and barns. Tore up sections of our woods in two different locations about 20 acres apart, stayed in the valley by the creek and "ran" that for a half mile or so, before going elsewhere to wreck it's vengance.

Tornadoes are my biggest fear ( right next to nuclear war) in life, I thought that living in hill country full of trees a hundred miles from the nearest trailer park would be ample protection, but Nature has a way of equalizing us all to Her wrath, doesn't She???

Don't want to scare you any further, but sometime in the future I will tell the recent story of the huge branch of the enormous silver maple tree in the yard that narrowly avoided falling on me and splattering me to smitherens, I outran it by a whole two seconds. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing :-)!!!

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

BTW, that "train sound" is the tornado, trust me on that one!!! High wind, even in our trees, sounds slightly different. That train sound is unmistakable.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Alan, I'm glad that you and your family escaped harm. I can feel your fear for your family in your writing. (PS - You really should probably get the knee examined. I did the same thing pushing my car out of a snowdrift in Dec '00; and I still can't trust it. Goes out on me when I try to jump down out of the back of the truck; and once when I was trying to assist a 300# lady back to her bed - we both ended up near the floor - with her on top! Of course, I haven't bothered to have MY knee looked at....)

Seems that many of us share a fear of wind storms here! Annie, I spent the 60's crawling under my desk in school, (which should have warped me for life, but probably just made me fatalistic instead!) so I should probably fear nuclear war more than winds, but I sure don't! Pop would always gather us up and herd us to the gully when the winds would get bad - we came back up to the house one time to find the front porch roof lying 200 yards past the house, the garage had been lifted up and came back down with all four sides flattened out like a house of cards, but a little plastic birdbath that was sitting between the house and garage was fine - still had water in it, even. Winds are a fickle thing. Is it any wonder that so many revere nature?

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Wow! Scary! Wisconsin gets tornadoes too, though I've never had one that close to me. When you all say the "locomotive sound", are you talking about the actual noise a train makes moving along, or are you referring to the whistle? Just so I know . . . :-(

I heard a story about one guy (somewhere here in Wisconsin, I think) who was working on remodelling a bathroom in his house. He'd even stripped off part of the subflooring. When he heard a tornado coming, he just jumped through into the basement. Tornado took the whole house, but he survived because he was able to get down there. I did know a lady who survived a no-warning tornado because she let her wet dog in the house and took it to the basement. The tornado took most of her house very shortly after she got down there. But she said that there was a plate with two tomatoes on the counter, still just sitting there. Very weird.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Joy, the "train noise" a tornado makes is the sound a train makes as it lumbers along, rattling and thundering, sounding like a giant behemoth moving across the countryside, the shear immenseness of bulk and size of purpose, is THAT noise, not so much the train whistle. The sound similar to the whoosh noise a fast moving and heavily loaded freight train makes flying down a hill.

You never forget that sound, it haunts you in your sleep, and wakes you up and leaves you in a cold sweat, thankful that it WAS a dream.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2002

Alan I'm glad that everything turned out OK. My house is near a very busy set of railroad tracks. In the summer when it's storming and I hear a train I get very nervous until I hear the whistle. Then I know it's just a train and not a tornado.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2002

Don't you just hate it when you can't see what's going on? Why are all the storms and tornados at night when you can't see then? We had one on the other side of the hill from us one night and didn't even know it until the next day. Trees and barns were all laying on the ground. Actually, I'm kinda glad we didn't know anything about it since we don't have anyplace to hide.

I would have hated to know it was there and I couldn't see it. Scary!

Wildman,(ignorance is bliss)(don't even go there!)

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2002