twas ugly......very ugly

[wolfdogs]

i have a 50 mile commute every day from Crystal City, VA, which is right across the Potomac from DC and next to Ragan Ntl Airport. I drive a commuter van. in the afternoon..i have a back up driver who drives home while i snooze in the pass seat. there are 12 other riders on board.

I live way down here because Stafford county is the closest county to DC that allows wolfdogs.. and has not intention of changing that as long as the peace is kept....and i try to do my part keeping them informed that it is....

well.....the remants of Francis moved thru here this afternoon...during the time of our commute home. the first thing was i got a phone call from mary that stafford county was under tornado watch till 5:30pm . we leave stal city at 4pm for the commute home.

getting up at 4:28am....and some of the female riders get up earlier than that, because we leave at 5:20am to head for work.... we all value our naps on the way home...so the radio is kept low...forwarded to the door speaker on the drivers side...to keep him awake and give him something to listen to....besides me snoring...hahahaha

suddenly...about half way thru our commute....a loud "warning" sound came from the speaker and woke me up... the passengers behind me woke up and got very wide eyed..... The "cell" which was rotating...was moving north east....right up the I95 corridor..which is what we were on. imagine...... express lanes.....that have two lanes....and regular lanes that have 3 lanes....that merge about that point.... and its bumper to bumper....stop and go.... wall to wall cars..

so there we were... having lived in texas for many years, and outrun a tornado on my motorcycle once.....and watched wall clouds and spouts comming down... i knew we could be in trouble. the sky was churning and it was death black.... you could see the cell.....it was moving straight for us.... tiny funnel clouds came out and sucked back up..then came down again...sucked back up.. the radio was saying "take cover" if you are in Stafford or Prince William county... we were on the interstate in Prince William. somebody said "what can we do"... i said..."if a tornado touches down..and hits us...it will flip this van....maybe worse... the safest thing is to get out and run down in a ditch or over the side on the right of the interstate which drops off sharply in the woods .....cover up and pray.

now.....99% of these are city folks...the most excitement and danger they have faced is being confronted by irate drives on the highway... one of the women said "but....ill get all messed up.....and it might not hit us"... i said "if it hits us...you might get more than messed up......."......

white knuckles were seen for a good 15 min....as we drove south...bumper to bumper....right under the cell passing over our heads....that was going north... for a funnel to drop any second.. it didnt.....we made it thru...and the sky became lighter..... no sooner were we thru a report of a tornado that touched down just 1 mile north of us came over the radio.....

i still cant imagine what would have happend if one had dropped and hit all those cars ...i know the people would have stayed in them and tried to "ride it out"....it would have been terrible.

Its still not anything like florida went thru....but i thought i would share a very tense moment for some VA folks.

time for a coors light......

see yalls laters.

[Nightrage]

Glad to hear you're ok. That could have been catastrophic (not that you aren't already aware of that). You're right though. Most people probably would have just sat in their cars. You're extremely lucky. Hope you never have to go through anything like that again.

[hotwhip9]

good to hear your ok.

[95TransAm]

I remember when i was younger, about 11 or so, and i was in northern illinois, not too far from rockford, and there were record setting touchdowns of tornadoes. I'll never forget going outside, looking up, and seeing a black and orange sky, and all around me, around 5 cells or so just to touchdown. It definitely wasn't as bad as the florida guys went through, but it most definitely gets your heart going. I'm glad to hear you made it out okay though!

[Coop '02Z]

Yeah the power is immense. I was in one while in college working at a grocery store in Wylie Texas (suburb of Dallas). It passed about ten feet from the wall I was on the other side of. No warning like you get in the car or at home on the TV or radio. It was just a stormy day prior to this. It pulled a fire exit door open from the outside. Picked up a customer from the parking lot and threw him against the big letters on the front of the store (amazingly it just broke his leg). The most incredible thing I saw was a 70 something station wagon (think Brady Bunch, wood grain and all) got flipped upside down and placed between one of the pillars that supports the front of the grocery store, in the open "porch" area where they keep the carts. So the car was wedged upside down between the pillar and the front wall of the store. crazy stuff...Oh and my car got moved about thirty feet just from the associated winds, and beat all to h*ll from all the debris.

[TODD 2000 V6 CAMARO]

I remember that one! I lived in Garland, Texas...like 15 minutes from Wylie. It was stormy there, but after we saw on the news that one had hit Wylie, we drove through there. What a mess. A few roofs were ripped off if I remember right. Mother nature can be a b****.

[76blackbird]

Back in '88

I was staying at a friend's house when a tornado hit in Raleigh at night. His wife got up to check on their daughter cause she had been ing and saw the funnel cloud heading straight for the house. If it wasn't for his daughter ing that night I don't think we would have survived. We got into the basement right before it hit the house. We mostly ended up with bumps and bruises and his car ended up in a old oak tree about 10 feet off the ground.
Needless to say that storm was pretty bad. Tore up a strip mall not too far from the house.
Nothing was left of the K-Mart that was there.

[wolfdogs]

I was staying at a friend's house when a tornado hit in Raleigh at night. His wife got up to check on their daughter cause she had been ing and saw the funnel cloud heading straight for the house. If it wasn't for his daughter ing that night I don't think we would have survived. We got into the basement right before it hit the house. We mostly ended up with bumps and bruises and his car ended up in a old oak tree about 10 feet off the ground.
Needless to say that storm was pretty bad. Tore up a strip mall not too far from the house.
Nothing was left of the K-Mart that was there.

i remember that one, my Dad told me about it. terrible broh.

[Kevin - Blown 95 TA]

When I was a kid and lived on a farm in IL, we had a twister come thru our place and it tore a lot of stuff up, but missed the house. It hit the chicken coop and killed the chickens who were all still standing on the roost stone dead, but with no feathers anymore. It was the strangest thing I ever saw. the barn was gone and the animals were scattered for 3 miles and they were scared out of their wits. We got only half of them back. It was a real mess. Nobody had any money back then, and cause of that storm, it seemed like we had to eat an aweful lot of pancakes and corn fritters for about a year til things got back to normal. I feel sorry for the people in Florida.