Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler What natural disasters have you been a part of?

There are reminders of the F4 tornado that hit here last november every time you drive to that end of town. All the houses are torn down or under repair, but all the twisted and broken trees still lie where they were tossed about.

Mike - glad to hear you're ok. I did a google image search and to say you were lucky is an understatement. Wow.

My own experience pales in comparison. I was in a movie theatre and kept hearing a loud racket up on the roof. Eventually it became so annoying, I get up to complain to management. When I exited the darkened theatre, I could see outside what must have been causing the noise. There was wind blowing like I'd never seen before. The small trees lining the parking lot were bent to the ground! Mind you, this is in New Hampshire. And it was a perfectly nice, sunny afternoon when we entered the theatre. Within minutes the wind was gone. We found out later that it was a microburst. We'd never heard of it before, but it's apparently something like an inverted tornado. It's very centralized and massively powerful. The sad news is that the center of the storm(?), event(?) - was at a small park in Statham, NH. A group was having a picnic, and all huddled under covered picnic area when the wind came up. The wind collapsed their shelter, and some people died. Driving past that spot was awe inspiring. That picnic area was at the base of a tree covered hill. I mean BIG old evergreen trees, and the entire hillside was wiped clean. Amazing power.

Tom, John, Spiff, et al, thanks for the kind words. I really didn't mean to sound quite so dramatic -- it's just that I've never seen this kind of thing firsthand, and over a week later I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around it. If anyone would actually like to see what happened in my town, here's a slideshow.

On a much happier note, I have a a new addition to my family. I picked her up in Birmingham on Thursday. She's absolutely beautiful, and she most certainly has a personality. Anyone have name suggestions? A fine German name would be preferred.

Mike,

Even TWO K cars wouldn't equal your experience! Really glad it missed you.

In reply to:

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Like Ron White says, it's not THAT the wind is blowing, it's WHAT the wind is blowing.

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Tom, that's one of my all-time favorite routines. When I first heard that, I was in tears. "If there's a yield sign in your spleen, it doesn't matter how many pushups you do each day. If you get hit by a Volvo....jogging don't come into play!"

Sweet ride! I'm jealous.

I didn't know until going to the link whether you were talking about an adoption, a dog or what.

How about Gretchen, Heidi or Trudy?

We watch that Ron White routine whenever we encounter it. Must've seen it a dozen times and I still laugh. I feel bad about it, though.

Lil late here but my contribution to the discussion...

Omaha Tornado of 1975

I wasn't quite 1 year old but I've heard about it my whole life. F4 tornado went right thru town, aparently it was the worse tornado incident in the US up to that point. I rode it out in the basement of my parents house, which the twister passed by about a mile of. More stories/pictures of it here.

Living in Nebraska my whole life you really do get a numb feeling towards tornados because they are a way of life in this part of the country (tornado alley). I thought I heard once 70-80% of the world's tornados occur here.

Gretchen is definitely out of the question. Gretchen is an ex-girlfriend of mine who moved to England to marry a guy who drives a Ferrari -- this is after I introduced the two of them. D'OH!!!

Heidi is an ex-boss. I like the name, but I'll take a pass. Plus, with "Heidi" there's the image of the blonde girl in pigtails. This machine is a burnette through and through.

I like Trudy, though. The jury's still out, but Trudy has been added to the list. It has a certain ring to it. Nice work, Tom!

Lol, I thought you were talking about a dog or cat also until I clicked the link. Nice ride, I finally got to pull my toy out of the garage for a day, until the weather turned sour again, will spring ever come

Nice ride! Wired for Axioms yet?