Destructive tornado in Nashville
Bad news from Nashville. A tornado strikes in parts of the city while people are in their homes sleeping, and the death toll so far is 22.
Photos at the link.
Hope you are all safe!
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
My hometown. Niece’s home suffered some damage, but nothing compared to devastation close by. Death toll has climbed over 20.
Most amazing photo is that of the car picked up and slammed into the side of an apt building on the third floor. https://1075theriver.iheart.com/featured/woody-and-jim/content/2020-03-03-nashville-tornado-hurls-car-into-3rd-floor-of-apartment-building/
Nearer to downtown, a tractor trailer was picked up and thrown into a parking lot down the street.
My hometown also.
Looks terrible.
The tornado struck a night in an area that rarely experiences such storms. RIP to victims and condolences to their families and friends.
The power of these things, the big bad ones, is just astonishing. Back in 1989 a tornado struck a few miles from my house and wiped out a few blocks of suburban shopping strip. I helped with the cleanup a couple of days later. Tornadoes are a regular occurrence in that area, but I had never seen the immediate destruction up close. I remember in particular the cars that had been picked up and dropped or hurled to the pavement with enough force to flatten them to roughly half of their original height, with their tires burst and wheels bent into ovals. When people say “It’s like a bomb went off” they aren’t exaggerating.
The only thing that keeps tornadoes from being scourges on the scale of that Christmas tsunami is that they typically cover only a fairly small area, don’t stay on the ground long, and are fast-moving.
We have had a tornado strike near our house 3 times, once just 2 blocks away. A 2×4 came through our bedroom window that time. We rush to the basement when the sirens go off, getting the dogs and cats down with us. That happens at least once during tornado season each year. Tornado warnings after bedtime are especially stressful. I feel for the people in Nashwille who are not accustomed to yearly close encounters or direct hits by tornadoes.
I would never visit OK or KS during tornado season.
I’m slightly surprised to hear people say that this is unusual for Nashville. I grew up in north Alabama just south of the Tennessee line, not more than 100 miles south of Nashville, and tornadoes were a fact of life for us. Maybe not as bad as OK or KS. But dugout shelters used to be a fairly common sight. That ceased to be the case some decades ago, I’m not sure why. Maybe because houses were better built? Or was there a change in weather patterns? Interesting question.
I spent quite a few nights as a child in our neighbor’s cellar. Texas Panhandle is as bad as Oklahoma. However, isn’t it unusual for one to happen so early in the morning? I don’t ever recall one other than in the afternoon or evening.
Which, NG says, is typical, but they can form at other times if the conditions are right.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/natural-disasters/tornadoes/