Is Wade OK ?

[bloke]

..

[jonesbrass]

Hope so.

[the elephant]

Yesterday was not a good day.

But we are okay. We spent the better part of an hour hiding in the hallway. The sirens were going off the whole time. Apparently, it pulled back up and hopped right over us, thankfully. We went out with the jeep and recovery gear to see if anyone needed help, but all was okay. There were emergency vehicles all over, seemingly headed everywhere *through* town, but not needed *in* town, unlike the big one back in 2010 that made national news. North, south, and east of us all got hit pretty hard.

Thanks very much for asking.

[bloke]

Thanks for heading out to see if you were needed.

It appears as though that tornado (or "front containing continuously-generated tornadoes") either "remained a tornado" or "continued to spawn tornadoes" all the way from south of Jackson to Tupelo.
I checked in with the band director at Tupelo High School...
He said that the tornado went across the southeast part of Tupelo (near where that shack is where Elvis was born) rather than the southwest corner (where the high school is located).

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/02/us/tupel ... index.html

[the elephant]

WATCH THIS!

I am down there in those beautiful, green, and terribly abused Yazoo City trees. Read the poster's comments. This is a worthwhile video if you have never lived through a tornado. (This is my fourth, now. The one in 2010 blew up the building I was hiding in. These are serious business.

So this is why I was hiding in my bathroom for nearly an hour.

[the elephant]

This is me being a "Disaster Tourist". The "shelter in place" order had just come down. The weatherman was telling us that it was still ten minutes out, so we snatched up the cats and our tech that we would need if we got hit (phones, laptops, cords and chargers, and some water, jackets, batteries, and flashlights), and Scottye and the cats locked themselves into the bathroom. I then raced around grabbing her horn and my tubas and some pillows and blankets to cover myself as I lay in the hallway while we waited. We heard the freight train, but nothing happened. The sirens blared away for about an hour, which is quite unnerving, to be honest.

After we had the all-clear we slowly put stuff back and distributed many cat treats. (They were so GOOD this time! We have them trained to go into the small bathroom when the sirens start their lovely song. The sirens mean lots of treats, so they run in and wait for us.)

Some of this is up at the top. I did not want to write about this right after I woke up this a.m. In the video, I had stashed everything and still had like four or five minutes until the predicted event time, so I took a look outside. When I opened the door it was WHITE outside due to the very heavy horizontal rainfall and the glare from the sun. By the time I thought to get the phone set up for video the glare had already dissipated. The super-fast cloud rotation had also stopped. So there I was, telling everyone how we all were hiding, but I was not hiding, and then some clueless git drove by, clearly not practicing good situational awareness. And things looked to be winding down. When I switched off and ran to the back we could feel and hear the so-called freight train sound. Since we have a major rail line about 300 yards from our house we are all-too-aware of what freight trains sound like up close.

Then it all calmed down.

Weird.

[bisontuba]

Scary stuff....

[bloke]

I realize this is a sidebar, but there are some factors that make tornadoes worse when they go through towns, and much worse than they could be:
- Townsfolk like to plant oak trees (large, handsome, very few above ground roots) next to their houses. Oak trees tend to grow big and several feet thick - yet with very small root balls, which defines that they are easily blown over. Oak trees are the perfect battering rams to fall on houses and smash them in half.
- In general, people like to plant large trees (various species) next to their homes. Again, this isn’t a good idea, because even if root systems are substantial, any tree (and fast-growing pines are the very worst) can be snapped in half and thrown over against houses. If a tree is 70 feet tall, it shouldn’t be any closer than 90 feet to a house. Yes, this means that people really shouldn’t be planting big trees next to their houses...but many people do this. (Our tree lines are well over a hundred feet away, and the only trees that are closer are ornamentals and the orchard. When a 150 year old oak (that was standing dead across the property line in the woods) finally fell towards our house, it was ugly for several months, but only ugly - and not a threat, nor anything that caused any damage, other than a dent in the dirt.
- Besides the fact that trees become gargantuan battering rams during tornadoes in towns, towns have strung their above-ground power, internet, and phone lines underneath all of their trees, and only tend to trim trees back far enough to prevent falling limbs from hitting power lines, rather than to prevent entire trees from falling on power lines.

Large trees look beautiful in high density population areas, but aren’t a good idea.
I lived in Memphis through an epic ice storm in 1994, and through a 100-mph straight-line wind event (nicknamed “hurricane Elvis“) in 2003. Both cost billions and billions of dollars in damage, some deaths, and most people (not “some”, but most) were without power for weeks, both times. Were it not for millions of (mostly small root system large oak) trees, the city would’ve fared geometrically better through both events.

[sweaty]

I agree about the trees. Besides safety, they're a big mess and a lot of work from the homeowner. People in my area (DC) WAY overplant.

[Three Valves]

When they are not falling on your house, they are clogging drains, upsetting driveways and sidewalks and depositing crap on your roof!!

[bloke]

When they are not falling on your house, they are clogging drains, upsetting driveways and sidewalks and depositing crap on your roof!!

yeah...It's nearly impossible to "work" that many leaves back into the ground on 1/6th to 1/2 acre lots (much of which are taken up by houses, driveways, walkways, outbuildings, decks, and shrubbery).
"Out here" (where there's ample open pasture) it's just not an issue - just as "fallen trees" aren't an issue...at least, not one that demands any urgent attention.

I haven't heard of any deaths - related to the MAIN TOPIC - which is amazing, considering how long that one (or group of tornado(es) trail of destruction is - roughly 200 miles.

[Yorkboy]

I’m glad you came out of it ok, elephant!

[WC8KCY]

Glad to hear you're OK!

Re: Trees--Your comments are spot-on. A straight-line wind/possible tornado event near my parents' place in 1997 went through a pine planation and snapped the upper 1/3 off of nearly every pine tree in a 10 mile long, 3 mile wide swath.

There was hardly a cabin, travel trailer, or mobile home in that section of forest that didn't end up flattened.

My parents have since wisely removed the aging birch, pine, and maple trees from around their home. A confirmed EF0 tornado went through their backyard a few years back and nothing consequential was hit by tree debris.