Seems that we had a tornado touch down relatively close to us today.
Part of what makes it interesting was that the thing hit at least some of Mrs CCU’s old workplace. Fortunately it seems that there were only minor injuries. All along the path things need to be cleaned up. Some houses need replacement or repairs. The same can be said for the Pfizer plant, where Mrs CCU worked a few years ago.
Where we live now, you couldn’t tell that anything had happened, but go north about 15 miles and it’s a different story. I-95 has been closed for clean up, for the last several hours. US301, the main road that Pfizer is on, I think is closed for clean up too.
Below is a link to one of the stories. We’re ok, and expect to remain that way for awhile.
Tornadoes are one of the bizarre aspects of living in that state. People get desensitized to the warnings, and the hit-or-miss nature of those monsters gets weirdly blended into peoples’ world views, faith and sense of destiny.
We’ve lived through a couple of them. One without realizing it because of how dark it was and how hard the rain was falling. We didn’t realize that one until a couple days later when we drove back home from a camping trip. The other sent us both home from work in Austin. That tornado landed a few miles to our south, ripped up a trailer park, and damaged the road surface of a bridge.
The 2nd was more sobering because of its proximity to us. This one to our north, 15 or so miles, is sad. Mrs CCU knows people who still work at the plant, so their lives are adversely affected. Hopefully cleanup and repairs take minimal time for everyone affected.
We had an EF1 in Highlands Ranch, CO about 1.5 miles from our house. 6 mile swath 1/4 wide. 16k trees down, not too much damage to buildings/houses. Turned into a great experience in community coming together and cleaning up. We got to have shorter church then went out and chain sawed broken/downed trees. 2k people organized and helped 200-300 homes. On the cul-de-sac we worked on, an unimpacted neighbor brought out a grill and made us lunch.
It’s always amazing to me how communities come together. We’ve actually been asked to stay away so that others can do their jobs in the area. I suspect that a ton of people volunteered. This part of NC is fairly poor, so communities coming together is a very good thing.
Definitely good to have some coordination rather than just some people running around with chain saws, esp. when the support systems (restaurants, etc.) might be offline. We left any limbs that were on a house, etc. since insurance probably needed to come by and assess and figure out next steps. But it was only an EF1. EF3 is pretty serious and the devastation after an EF5 is horrendous.
Yeah pictures of the area look a touch surreal. Things could have been much, much worse. We are all so glad that there were only a few injuries, 16 or so per WRAL, and 2 of those potentially life threatening.
Hurricane Beryl is the first category 4 storm ever recorded in the month of June and is also the farthest East a storm has ever hit a hurricane level 4.
Barreling through the Caribbean Sea. They said it would be a busy and strong year for named and major storms and this early huge one might cause $1B in damage (and not hit a huge populated area like Houston or FL).
File this one under grade school pattern recognition:
Now, I ain’t no expert on weather, but tropical storm to Cat 5 in less than 24 hours seems serious. (Prolly Mexican scientists squeezing the Mexican taxpayer, just like a Tijuana shakedown. I feel better now.)
Hurricane Otis was among the most shocking hurricanes I’ve seen in my 25-plus years here at The Weather Channel.
But Otis went berserk, going from a tropical storm on the morning of Oct. 24 to Category 5 hurricane that evening, defying forecasts. That left local officials, emergency managers and the public, who were expecting a tropical storm or Category 1 landfall, scrambling just hours before Otis ransacked the city in a nightmare scenario overnight.