May 8 storm in MO.

mamabear · May 14, 2009

We just got power back from the storm last Fri. It hit our area hard. In places it looks like Mt. St. Helens when it knocked down all the trees. When it hit, I was yelling for my daughter to get in the basement while I grabbed the dogs. then someone was pounding on our door. Neighbors were driving down our road (gravel county road) & a tree hit it & knocked their window out. Needless to say, I grabbed them & we all ran to the basement. They had their 3 yr old boy with them, poor baby!! We stayed in the basement for 45 min. while the storm raged on. At one point during all this, I did go back up to grab flashlights etc. & heard the "train" sound accompanied by tornados (for the second time in this storm) so I ran back downstairs. When we finally felt it was safe to come up, we were stunned at the damage. Our house was fine, we only lost a couple shingles, a vent fan, & an apple tree. but the roads were blocked by dozens of trees. So we grabbed the chainsaw & walked down the road to the nearest blacktop, & that was completely blocked. There were other people coming out of their homes to survey the damage. With all of us pitching in, we got most of the trees far enough off the road to get cars by in case an ambulance was needed. We jumped in the truck & drove as far as we could, about a mile, & didn't recognize anything. we were right by a trailer park & didn't even know it. It was completely covered with downed trees. You couldn't see the trailers. I don't know how, but no one was hurt! Lots of damage to homes all up & down our road, but with the amount of trees dow, it's amazing there wern't more houses damaged. We have an artesian well on our road, so we always have water, but it took 3 days to get the road cleared. still, it was so nice when they did, we all took hallaluyah showers.
Here are some pix of the trees. Anyone close enough to drive to Fredericktown & Patton, you should. You can't get the scope of the damage by pix alone.
I am sooooooo thankful there were so few injuries, & that my daughter was sick that day & stayed home. I would have been frantic if she had been at school cuz all the roads were blocked, power was down so no phones, & cell phones were not working.
Wow!

mamabear · May 14, 2009

The pix are in Patton. It use to be a tunnel of gorgeous trees lining the road. Now - -

mamabear · May 14, 2009

forgot to add they are saying this was an in-land hurricane. Has anyone ever heard of this before?

smurf-42 · May 14, 2009

Never heard of an in land hurricane. Glad to know you and daughter are safe. Angels were watching over you.

Sue

mamabear · May 14, 2009

smurf-42 said:
Never heard of an in land hurricane. Glad to know you and daughter are safe. Angels were watching over you.

Sue

thanx Sue. They were indead!

shaun7 · May 14, 2009

must have been frightening

Monty · May 14, 2009

They way the trees are laid out in mainly just one direction would not be consistent with a tornado. I have heard of an inland hurricane, and there is a technical name for it, but it doesn't come to mind right now. Macroburst or something like that? I had the same thing just on the block where I live and they called it a Microburst. It blew over my above ground swimming pool, took out my fence and part of my patio and storage shed. The house behind me wasn't touched and only one other house to the west was damaged. Still pretty darn scary! Monty

ivan salis · May 14, 2009

micro burst is like a bomb going off -- no warning -- just boom --there it is ---often very localized damage but very heavy as well.

mamabear · May 17, 2009

we finally got power back but our neighbors - - not yet. driving to town today, it took my breath away, again! it's hard to believe there could be so much damage to the trees & so little damage to homes. though some of them are pretty bad, you would think there would be more.
the storm lasted for over an hour. that is not a micro burst to my understanding. the satelite images actually show an eye, like a hurricane. would love to know exactly what it was.
across the road, a fawn was killed when the trees went down. I wondered what kind of damage to the wildlife it exacted. my flag pole snapped in half & flew into the horse pasture. glad it didn't take out a horse.

Thanx for the info everyone. & thanx for reading!

Monty · May 17, 2009

No, what I was referring to was when the entire line along the front collapses and causes a straight wind several miles wide and sometimes over a hundred miles per hour. I knew it wasn't a micro and that's why I said Macro with an a. My grandfather called it a cyclone not to be confused with a tornado. The local weather man used a specific term but I can't remember it. Monty