Date: 06/25/96 01:52:00 PM
Subject: Oh My God! Tornado hits DC area! Near My house!
Oh MY GOD!
You know that when I start a message like that it means that something
really amazing happened!
Yesterday a massive "supercell" thunderstorm that spawned a tornado passed
right over the area where I work and live! Our power was knocked out since
5 PM yesterday until just a few minutes ago! Of course, one of the first
things I had to do was turn on the computer and send this message out to
the MM list and a select group of other friends around the country!
Oh BTW- This is Chris M aka gcmastra aka CmDraco- I post from so many
different accounts that you may not have realized. Reply to:
gcmastra@mcs.drexel.edu or directly to this Compuserve address if you have
any response, since I no longer subscribe to the full mmlist feed (just the
digest for now). Also, you may as well hold your response until next week
when we get back from our visit to Boston. We are leaving tonight, as as
my mother said, it was a good thing that the storms happened Monday night
instead of Tuesday or we would not have been able to leave.
Also- you should know that we are alright! This is the second tornado that
we lived through. The first was on my wife and my first wedding
anniversary on July 15, 1988 in Omaha NE. This one was just two days after
our daughter Elisabeth's first birthday. Ironic? Synchronistic? Yup- but I
will save the details for a later message.
I just wanted to make sure that I posted something to the MMlist about this
before I leave for Boston tonight. I am sure that many of you have seen
this story on the news by now. Technically I am on vacation this week, but
I had just gone in to the office for a few hours yesterday to clean off my
desk and check my messages etc. I had just read the responses to my
earlier posting about "Lightning, Floods, etc." there were several
responses that said that lightning was totally unpredicatable (How TRUE!
Read on...). I posted my reply in which I talked about weird lightning in
the skies over DC last year, the increased frequency of lightning strikes
on people in urban areas this year, and the unpredicatable and rapid
formation of "supercells" that are becoming more and more frequent.
As I left the office, the air was thick and heavy with humidity and ozone.
At exactly that moment, unknown to me, a massive "supercell" was forming
over Loudon County about 20 miles to the west of my location between
Centerville and Fairfax City (that's right- my office, and also my home,
were right on the middle of the storm track- if you have seen the reports
on the news!). It was lucky that I had planned NOT to work a full day,
because the supercell, and the tornado, touched down in Centerville during
the middle of the evening rush hour, and tracked right over a path that
included my office building, the route which I take driving home, and then
very close to our house in Annandale. You may have heard Annandale
mentioned on the evening news also; I didn't because we had no TV for
almost 24 hours, but a few other people told me they saw it on the national
news.
I got home about 3:30 PM, when the sky was getting dark and a few sprinkles
were starting to fall. By 5 PM all hell would break loose. I was at home
with my daughter when the storm hit. My wife Susan had gone to get her
hair cur and it turned out was in the supermarket when the worst part
passed over. The sky never got as dark as during the tornado in Omaha, but
the wind was gusting at least 70 mph. There were many lightning strikes
close to our house. After things started to ease up, Susan got home okay.
By 6 PM we were able to go outside and survey the damage. There were tree
limbs and leaves down all over the cul-de-sac.
Here is a recap of some news accounts in the morning paper, and things that
I learned from talking to people at work today (our power was out but our
phone was still on, as is typical in these situations). The worst of the
storm hit during evening rush hour. People in my office building who were
still at work got stuck on the top floor of the building with the power
out. The tornado which touched down in Centerville only a few miles from
the building evidentally picked back up and over the building before making
a beeline for the neighborhood where I live. Downed powerlines were
everywhere, and there was debris all over I-66 and other roads. The
beltway near Annandale was flooded, and all traffic in any direction was at
a crawl. By 6 PM when the storms had passed over into Maryland, 250,000
people were without power, 85,000 of them in northern Viginia. Most people
had their power back on by 10:30 PM last night, but not us.
We came through it all in better shape than most however. Our house, which
is made of brick, withstood the wind very well (thanks to the three pigs).
We still had two coolers full of ice from Elisabeth's birthday party
yesterday, so we transferred the perishables from the refrigerator to the
coolers. Susan and I are both on vacation this week, so neither of us had
to go into work this morning. We had planned on staying home, packing, and
clearing all the leftovers out of the fridge anyway.
After eating dinner by candlelight we took our daughter Elisabeth out for a
walk in the stroller. Right on our street, there were two houses on which
trees had fallen and smashed through the roof. On another street around
the corner, it was obvious that lightning had struck several times in a
condensed area. One massive hundred-year-old tree had obviously been hit
by lightning, exploded from the inside, and fallen down over the top of the
power lines which were sagging down but had not snapped. All this seemed
like a lesson about the power and unpredictablilty of lightning which I had
just been discussing earlier in the day.
Well, I really want to write more, but I also want to mail this now, and
then I must go pack our suitcases for our trip tonight. What a week! From
the CyberSmith Cafe in Harvard Square I will try to send another update, in
which I will also tell you about Elisabeth's birthday parties this weekend.
Bye for now! Take care! And be careful, especially if they say there is a
thunderstorm headed your way!
Chris M
Reply to: gcmastra@mcs.drexel.edu