Now I have seen everything!

[madrussian]

Well, I have seen it all. Tornados in South Louisiana in January. My neighborhood was hit by an F1 tornado yesterday. My son called me at work saying rather frantically that a tornado touched down in my backyard. I was 20 miles away at work. I drove home as fast as I could to find my subdivision looking like a bomb went off. Thankfully my home was not damaged. The tornado cut one of my pine trees in two and threw the top of the tree into two other pine trees where it stayed. Had to use my wifes vehicle to pull it down. Debris everywhere and my workshop lost half its shingles but no leaks yet. Others in my neighborhood were not so fortunate. They lost everything. Just three homes down and the roofs where torn off, not a rafter left. Unbelievable. What really gets me is that there are still meteorologists that say that it is not due to global warming. If someone would be kind enough to explain to me how to post pictures, I could show you what it looked like this morning when we walked around the neighborhood.

 

[Ogri the trog]

Wow Madrussian
I'm glad that you are OK, hope it doesn't take too long to repair the damage.
You'll have to get your photos "hosted" by someone like photobucket or imagestation, (they're free to register), you "upload" the image from your PC to the site, then there'll be a choice of linking tools on the hosting site - just select the most appropriate and paste it into your post.

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[British Red]

Glad to hear you are okay mate

Full instructions on putting an image into a post are here mate

http://www.bushcraftuk.com/community/showthread.php?t=13734

Red

 

[madrussian]

Thanks. I'll try to do that later today. I still have alot of work to do. I failed to mention that there were fatalities. Two confirmed dead and several injured across town from me. We're used to hurricanes. At least there is advanced warning. This is crazy.

 

[Spikey DaPikey]

That sucks

Wishing you all the best.

 

[madrussian]

Here we go. The first two are my backyard'

The rest are my neighbors.

 

[Chopper]

Thats frightening.

It looks just like my daughters bedroom.

 

[Biddlesby]

That is scary! You are lucky if you house is not damaged.

 

[Too Much Kit To Carry]

Glad that you and your family are ok and I'm sorry to see so much damage to your neighbour’s houses.

I've been involved with property construction and development for over 20 years and when I see the amount of damage you guys in the States suffer from the elements it makes me wonder why the fabric of the buildings always seem to be so susceptible to damage. Are building methods in the US not sufficient to withstand what are becoming regular phenomenon in the weather?

Best of luck with the clearance of the debris!

Phil.

 

[madrussian]

Thanks for the concern. We were very fortunate. Most houses in the Us are built using pine lumber. When you look at older homes built in the 30's and 40's or so, they were built using hardwoods. In this area cypress was used and these older houses can take a beating. My house was built out of concrete. It was built to withstand hurricanes and so far it has. One thing I have noticed is that the houses with fewer trees around them always sustain the most damage. Everyone worries that the trees will fall on their house. Sometimes they do. But without the trees, there usually is more wind damage.

 

[Stuart MacD]

That must have been blumin scary for your family, but I'm glad there OK but at the same time it would be exciting to see nature exploding like that

 

[madrussian]

My son was the only one home when it hit. He was a little shook up.

 

[jamesoconnor]

Good to see that you are all safe. Some amazing pics.

 

[Neanderthal]

Glad you and your family are OK and hope you get things back to 'normal' quickly.
It is scary when things happen in your neighborhood.

I watched a UK 'Tornado Special' on TV last week where they were looking at the F2 tornados which hit London and Birmingham.

Apparently the UK gets on average 35-40 tornadoes every year but most are in rural areas where they don't make the news.
Because of the UKs compact size we get more tornadoes per mile than anywhere else in the world!

Who would have thought we would need 'The TORnado and storm Research Organisation' (www.torro.org.uk) over here.

I've moved my bushcraft gear down out of the loft.

Stu