Close Call!

I would imagine that some of you follow these blogs regularly. If you kept up with mine, then you will know that I dealt with a flood and more recently a lightening strike. Now I need to add a tornado to my list. We never really received an official word if it was a tornado or just a huge wind gust, but all indicators are that it was a tornado.

So, here’s the story. On Monday (August 4) I was taking a ‘working’ vacation and we decided to go see the new Mummy movie. we saw the early show and left the theater at about 6:30. When we stepped out, we we taken aback by the thick air and a general odd feeling. You could not see the sky…it was just a strange kind of grey.

When we got home, I brought up my weather program, Weather Pulse which is a really cool and free piece of software. There was a severe thunderstorm warning and so I looked at the radar and it looked like a whopper of a storm was coming (check out the radar). We stepped out onto our deck to see if we could see it coming, but it was still the same stale, hot and humid air with absolutely no wind. I then came back in and looked at the weather once again and that’s when the tornado warning came across. Then, I went back out on the deck and that’s when we saw a dark line moving our way. It was approaching quite fast. After a few minutes, we could hear the wind coming and when it arrived we found ourselves running inside the house.

Once, in the house, I was looking out at the sky and at my travel trailer and that’s when the wind really kicked up. Trees bowed, branches and leaves started flying. I saw a strange flickering against my trailer. I thought at first that it was burning but then realized that I was seeing the reflection of power lines shorting out! I ran to the front windows and saw those lines, on fire and that’s when I told everybody to get on the basement and that’s just when the power went out As we were heading down, we all could feel the pressure in our ears which is one sign of a tornado. We could also hear a lot of things outside breaking and snapping!

After a little while in the basement, we decided we could head up. We grabbed the storm candles and our oil lamps. If you don’t have those items, then you really should consider having some. Storm candles are made to burn very slow so they will last much longer than the fancy scented candles. Of course, the oil lamps are just like the ones our parents and grand parents told us about. They are great because they add quite a bit of light….much more than candles can provide.

My son and I took a look around and were surprised to find many power and phone lines down in our neighborhood not to mention the many trees and branches that came down. One of my neighbors really got hit hard because a tree fell on his house and car, totaling the car. My son and I went over and helped him get his wife out and to safety.

We were very concerned by the many power lines that came down. Of course, one never wants to approach those as you never know if they are hot or not. Always treat them like they are. We did run into town to a local store to get some more batteries for our flashlights since ours were getting pretty dim from constant usage. While driving to the store, we noticed many rescue vehicles from not only our town, but also other towns. Living in a small town means our fire department is a volunteer fire department and so are most of the other towns near us. The other towns fire departments had responded to mutual aid requests. In the downtown area, a roof was ripped off a building and the apartments had to be evacuated so the fire department could take care of possible electrical fires.

I have to say, all this was quite surreal. I have never been directly through something like this. This really was something you see on the news and as the old cliche goes, this usually happens to other people!

Many of my neighbors were either without power or they had some damage to their houses as a result of this storm. Unlike the flood and the lightening strike, we came out pretty much unscathed! It was truly a blessing! The travel trailer was untouched, even though it was surrounded by many trees. The house was not hurt by debris and we only had a couple descent sized branches to clean up. The night of the storm, we lost power but it was restored after about five hours. Most of my other neighbors were without power for days and there are still people in town without power.

I loaned some of the storm candles and the oil lamp to some friends. I also loaned my generator from my travel trailer to another friend. It is a Kipor and even though I realize people have some negative opinions of these generators, I have to say, it performed quite well. The friend that was using it was running a refrigerator some fans and some lights. He was able to run the 3000 watt generator for 15 hours on a single (3.5 gallon) tank of gas for about three days continuous!

That brings us to today, Saturday. The city came by early this morning and picked up the brush. My high speed internet provider came over this evening and repaired my service which was out since the storm. Things are ‘trying’ to normalize in our community. This will be a storm that we will talk about for some time.

Once again, like the other adverse things that we have been through, I am forced to look at this and put it into perspective. Nobody was hurt and even though it was scary, we were all only a bit inconvenienced.

As for camping, we are planning another backyard ‘camping trip’ as well as a trip to see my parents in Kentucky during Labor Day weekend. I am enjoying my trailer and I am grateful to have a great dealer. He is still going to allow me to see one of the first Rockwood 8314 travel trailers with the bedroom slide. I can’t wait to see the unit!

Happy camping and see you next Sunday!

David Kurtz