The Aftermath

Today, we left our house for the sole purpose of finding out what roads we can and can not go down, because we are pretty blocked in by tornado damage and have a thing or twelve to do tomorrow. It ends up, many roads are still closed, so we may have to go over the river, through the woods, and past the seven dwarfs to get where we are going, but everyone is alive, so that's all that matters.

While we were out, I took some pictures of the damage to show all of you. They're not great pictures. I took them from the car while we were moving, although many people were pulled to the side of the road taking pictures. These are not pictures of the really bad damage by any means. The roads the tornadoes came right over are, as I mentioned, still closed. Once we can get back up them, I'll try to take some pictures so you can really understand what happened here. These are just the pictures I could get from the roads that ran parallel to the damage but were not affected, yet still, they were humbling. Since we had three tornadoes touch down, these pictures are from different parts of the area. Click all pictures to enlarge.

This picture is such a testament to how oddly the tornadoes hit. People said that they were touching down and pulling back up again, only to drop again, most likely due to all the hills and valleys we have. We were seeing a lot of this; houses and buildings that were totally missed, but then another building right next to it was down. You can see that is the case here, and then to the left of the house, all the trees are just gone. Donzo. The tornado took no prisoners, but left the house.

You can see here where the tornado wiped out all the trees on the top of the hill, as it was a very heavily wooded area on that hill as far as the eye could see, but left some on the side. You can literally see the path it traveled, leaving yet another house alone.

You'll have to enlarge this one. In the background, down the road we can't yet get down, you can see all the insulation and carnage hanging in the trees mercilessly.

Believe it or not, this place used to have a roof over the whole building. But hey, at least the building is standing. Roofs can be fixed.

Yet another testament to how funky this tornado was. There's trees down on either side of the one that is standing, but somehow it made it through like a champ. We saw this with houses a lot, too. In one case, the tornado went in between two houses and a garage, tearing up all the trees and leaving a path, but not taking the houses, just a few shingles from the roof and leaving a few holes in it, too.

I couldn't get any closer to this place yet, either, but if you enlarge this, you can see where the tornado touched down up on the hill and then follow the path down, over the building, and kept going.

This was in between a building and a heavily lined area of trees, both that were still standing just fine. You can actually see the corner of the building in the left side of the picture.

This was a steel sign to the place where they park the school buses for our local schools. Anymore, not so much. And to think, the tornado didn't actually come within fifty yards of this sign. This was just collateral.

This is another angle of the same sign from further away. The fallen sign is behind and slightly to the left of the yellow sign. This is also a pretty open view of the path the tornado took and the damage. We used to have a lot more trees than that on the hillside.

This is yet another picture of the direct path of the tornado. You can see where the trees are absolutely gone, a house, too, yet the house in the very left of the picture is still standing. You can see where it ran over the first house, and then backed up and took a path on the other side of those trees behind the house that's still standing. This, again, was all heavily wooded area.

This tree line is just gone. This was a large, heavily wooded path of trees.

Another angle of the picture above.

The area where the pine trees are fallen was also a heavily lined wooded area. Those telephone pools used to be straight, too. We're aware from the news that the damage at the top of the hill near where those trees have fallen is pretty well damaged, however, we can't get up that road. This was as close as we could get. This is the road I need to go down tomorrow.

This is another view of the previous picture, only from further back. Where were sitting where the cars in this picture when I took the last one.

And last but not least, another round of trees obliterated. It's a miracle no one was hurt, and I've not even showed the worst of it. There's thirty houses that were completely flattened in the EF2 winds. Someone was watching over us last night.