Bloodstar
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Loc: Tucson, AZ
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Survived my First Direct Hit from a Tornado Thursday Evening
Sun Jun 16 2013 11:00 AM
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I thought it would be interesting to let you know that the tornado that started in Cherokee county, went through Cobb County and ended in Fulton County on Thursday night landed a direct hit on our neighborhood (Wendwood Drive, which is mentioned in the storm report is literally the next street over from where we live in the neighborhood). I will say that it was blind luck that no one was seriously injured in our neighborhood, because we had less than 5 minutes warning that anything was happening.
I was trying to get our dogs inside as soon as I received the tornado warning, and just as they had gotten into the house I saw the entire back yard (trees and bushes and anything flexible) flatten from wind. I had time to take maybe one or two steps before the trees started crashing down and after another step or two everything stopped breaking. I'd say the entire event lasted less than 5 seconds. The bad news, our house will need about $20k in repairs from the tree that actually hit the house. The good news, we have home owners insurance. And somehow nothing valuable inside the house was damaged.
We finally got power back Yesterday Afternoon, and I would be willing to say that the winds I saw were at least 70 - 80MPH conservatively, (having lived in Tampa when Frances decided to camp over us for 18 hours, The maximum winds for Frances at the time was 70MPH (we probably didn't see 70MPH over land, but certainly sustained in the 50+ range with gusts hitting 60 for most of that 18 hours) and the wind I saw was much stronger than anything I saw during Frances.
Dumb luck is why I'm writing this, because had I been about 10 feet over, I'd have been hit by the tree. The Neighborhood is fairly cleaned up now, but there are at least 6 cars and over a dozen houses that took significant damage (enough to require some serious tarping). Where the tornado tracked in the neighborhood I'd say over half the houses sustained more than cosmetic damage, Nothing was flattened, but I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of houses are total losses (shifted off foundations, etc).
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M. S. Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Tech - May 2020
NOAA MADIS/HADS Programmer
U. Arizona PhD Student
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