It's a good thing to have more than one camera

[rod_larson]

<p>A week ago today we had a tornado go through our neighborhood. I loaded a roll of film in my trusty Pentax<br>

MX only to find it was jammed. I quickly reloaded the film into my recently aquirred Olympus OM-1n and<br>

proceeded to document the aftermath. No serious damage at my house but one person was killed when<br>

their car was hit by a tree.</p>

<p>This was what my street looked like. That is my neighbor's car with the tree laying on it. There wasn't a<br>

scratch on it.</p><div></div>

[rod_larson]

<p>Once we got things cleaned up a little I took a walk to the east. This house was just one street<br>

over.</p><div></div>

[rod_larson]

<p>There is a contractor doing some bridge painting and they had this semi tank trailer parked on<br>

the bridge at the top of the photo. It was blown onto the westbound lane of I94. Luckily I94 had<br>

been shut down all weekend for repair work so there was no traffic at the time. How lucky can<br>

you get!</p><div></div>

[rod_larson]

<p>The National Weather Service determined it was an EF1 tornado but it still had enough power<br>

to bend signs.</p><div></div>

[rod_larson]

<p>There is this island in the Mississippi that has become a large Blue Heron rookery. There were<br>

around 150 nests on it. I took this photo in early April just after the Herons had returned.</p><div></div>

[rod_larson]

<p>The funnel cloud must have made a direct hit. There isn't a single nest left and most of the trees<br>

are gone. The surviving Herons just circled the island for hours like they were looking and<br>

looking.</p>

<p>The tornado damaged a large number of homes in mostly poor neighborhoods. We were with-<br>

out power for three days so there was no TV or internet and only cell phones. We didn't find<br>

out about Joplin until Monday and realized how much worse it could have been.</p>

<p>The one bright moment was that since there was no TV, internt, video games,etc., people<br>

were out every night with their families walking through the neigborhoods meeting their<br>

other neighbors. There were hardly crime incidents.</p><div></div>

[JDMvW]

<p>As I was listening in the dark on my battery radio, they were reporting "debris fall" in places not directly hit by tornados. I found that creepy.</p>

<p>I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little tired of all this.</p>

[gnashings]

<p>Poor herons. That "wood projectile" is really sobering... nature is a powerful lady.</p>

[Rick_van_Nooij]

<p>I'm glad you and your neighbors are okay, Rod.<br>

Very sobering images. Brings home that not only humans are victims of Mother Nature.</p>

 

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>Scarey stuff, <strong>Rod</strong>, and what dramatic photographs. I live in an area where we experience very high winds, but damage of this sort is virtually unknown. My thoughts are with you guys who seem to be in the path of these horrific events.</p>

[capitalq]

<p>Thanks for the excellent documentation, Rod. Some very powerful images here. The Rookery sequence is beautiful and sad.</p>

[maciek_stankiewicz]

<p>Really shocking. Great pictures and excellent documentation. Yes, it's good to have camera handy...</p>

[tom_cheshire]

<p>"Wood projectile" reminds me of a similar photo from about 10 years ago but it was a 2x4 and it was stuck in the side of a cow (still walking around eating and looking clueless).</p>

[skygzr]

<p>I remember after Hurricane Hugo people actually got out of their houses and talked to each other. Also, since there was no power you had to cook everything in your freezer within a day or two. I never had so much grilled venison! Good memories of bad times.</p>

[subbarayan_prasanna]

<p>Vivid documentation. Glad you and the neighborhood are safe. Hardly imagined that the whirly could be so violent. Thanks for posting. sp.</p>

[rod_larson]

<p>Thanks everone for your concern and good wishes. We were very lucky. Nothing near as bad<br>

as Joplin.</p>

<p>One amusing ancedote. On Monday morning one of the local radio stations announced the city<br>

was setting up an exclusion zone and any residents leaving the area would need ID to get<br>

back in and the location of the checkpoints was posted on the radio stations website. Needless<br>

to say there was no internet access in the area.</p>

[Rob_the_waste]

<p>That is indeed a sobering post. No matter how advanced and technologically sophisticated we get, we are still no match for Mother Nature.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>By the way, Rod, my "getting tired of this" applied to the tornados, not your post, which is very nice photographically even if the topics are no fun at all.<br>

Just in case....</p>

[mike_wagner6]

<p>Tornadoes scare the hell out of me, and I used to be a meteorologist in the south and midwest.<br>

Unless you have a storm cellar, there isn't a lot you can do, except try to get to an interior room with no windows. I would put my family in a bathtub and put a mattress on top of them and then sit on the mattress.<br>

In the days of broadcast TV with CRT picture tubes, you could make a crude tornado detector by tuning to channel 13, assuming it was not a regular channel and turn down the brightness to where the screen just went black. If a tornado came within range there would be white flashes, and if the screen turned solid white, a tornado was very near.</p>

[rod_larson]

<p>JDM - you and me both. You seem to be right in the middle of where the storms have been<br>

tracking while I am on the northern edge.</p>

[Mike Gammill]

Yes, Mike, that was an actual detection method. Note that the better your antenna the more warning you got. For some

reason I thought it was channel 2, but I could be wrong. Popular Science had an article about this in the early 1960's.

[Karim Ghantous]

<p>Mike & mike: very cool. I'm sure it has something to do with electricity (caused by friction of the air) or ionization. Am I close? Too bad that destruction is involved, but it's a very interesting use of technology (and no doubt a science lesson).</p>

<p>Cameras like the Nikonos would be useful in these environments, I'll bet.</p>