05-21-2013, 12:56 PM
Having lived through a tornado myself, my heart goes out to the folks in Oklahoma. Especially those who lost children at the school. Heartbreaking to say the least.
We lost our first home in the EF-5 tornado that passed through Frankfort, KY, April 3, 1973, and that was on the ground for a distance of over 20 miles and traveling at a speed of 70 mph. It was the strangest looking storm cloud I'd ever seen and have never seen anything like it since. The main things that I remember about the storm cell carrying the tornado were that it was almost completely black and appeared to be perfectly flat across its base. There were constant lighting strikes that looked and sounded like a walking artillery barrage. The tornado itself, was on the southwest edge of the storm cell, and just looked like white clouds touching the ground. A mile or so north of the tornado, there were hail stones the size of grapefruit that destroyed vehicles and went right through the roofs of homes.
We had about a 5 minute warning that a tornado was approaching our area and when I looked out the window and saw it, I immediately took the wife and our 5 month old daughter to the basement. I wasn't able to grab our little dog Cindy who rode out the storm upstairs. After it passed, nothing was left above the basement, but Cindy was found by a neighbor about 100 yards from our house and was not injured! So many strange things happen in these storms.
A family of three was killed just up the street from us. Their home was brick but built on a concrete slab and after the tornado, nothing was left but the concrete slab. Their bodies were found some distance away from their destroyed home. One other thing that always sticks in my mind was the horse that was in the field across from our home; killed by a tree limb. Very sad sight. In spite of the storm traveling through many residential areas, only two other people perished that day in Frankfort.
You can replace your home and your stuff, but you can't recover the lives of those that didn't survive. You also can never completely get that day out of your mind and to this day, whenever they issue a tornado warning for us, it scares the daylights out of us. Although we don't live in the main "Tornado Alley" section of the U.S., we sure have our share of them in Kentucky.
We lost our first home in the EF-5 tornado that passed through Frankfort, KY, April 3, 1973, and that was on the ground for a distance of over 20 miles and traveling at a speed of 70 mph. It was the strangest looking storm cloud I'd ever seen and have never seen anything like it since. The main things that I remember about the storm cell carrying the tornado were that it was almost completely black and appeared to be perfectly flat across its base. There were constant lighting strikes that looked and sounded like a walking artillery barrage. The tornado itself, was on the southwest edge of the storm cell, and just looked like white clouds touching the ground. A mile or so north of the tornado, there were hail stones the size of grapefruit that destroyed vehicles and went right through the roofs of homes.
We had about a 5 minute warning that a tornado was approaching our area and when I looked out the window and saw it, I immediately took the wife and our 5 month old daughter to the basement. I wasn't able to grab our little dog Cindy who rode out the storm upstairs. After it passed, nothing was left above the basement, but Cindy was found by a neighbor about 100 yards from our house and was not injured! So many strange things happen in these storms.
A family of three was killed just up the street from us. Their home was brick but built on a concrete slab and after the tornado, nothing was left but the concrete slab. Their bodies were found some distance away from their destroyed home. One other thing that always sticks in my mind was the horse that was in the field across from our home; killed by a tree limb. Very sad sight. In spite of the storm traveling through many residential areas, only two other people perished that day in Frankfort.
You can replace your home and your stuff, but you can't recover the lives of those that didn't survive. You also can never completely get that day out of your mind and to this day, whenever they issue a tornado warning for us, it scares the daylights out of us. Although we don't live in the main "Tornado Alley" section of the U.S., we sure have our share of them in Kentucky.
Ed
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"