Yeah, I am terrified of tornadoes! I have never seen one, nor do I ever want to. I'm not sure if they have them in England. I have researched it, and I have seen that there has been some outside of London, but it doesn't seem like a common thing. This is just what I assume by the tiny bit of research I've done on the subject.
The tornado that ripped through Alabama a few days ago, was just absolutely devastating. I try not to dwell too much on it, and limit myself to reading about it because it's so sad. Last I heard, the death toll was at least 300 people. There is a page on FB which allows people who have found pictures and/or documents around their homes to post the files on the page in hopes to find the owners of the documents/pictures. I must say that looking through the album of all the documents and pictures found thus far, is so sad. I couldn't go through it for long. The pictures put faces to lives that were possibly destroyed due to this beast of a tornado.
Anyway. The reason I posted a blog about this is because I saw an article, which I found interesting, today that said this:
This month was so stormy that if you add up all the damage it comes out to the US being hit with the equivalent of two Hurricane Katrinas. The deadly Tuscaloosa tornado tracked from Mississippi and stayed on the ground an incredible 380 miles before it dissipated in North Carolina.
The old record for the longest tornado track was 219 miles in 1925 with the Tri-State tornado that started in Missouri and ended up in Indiana. That tornado was part of the deadliest tornado outbreak that killed over 700 people. The second deadliest tornado outbreak was this past week with over 300 fatalities and counting. These are statistics that do not lie. This will go down as the most violent weather month in US history bar none.
This tornado caused enough damage to be equivalent to TWO Katrina's? Wow. I was amazed by that. I'm also amazed that it lasted for 380 miles. I always thought tornadoes were short lived, but apparently they aren't. Although, it seems very rare for them to last so long as the last tornado that lasted a heck of a lot shorter, but still a long while, was back in 1925. It went for 219 miles, as the article above states. Amazing.
So, the remnants of this storm hit Jacksonville on Thursday. It seemed like we could have possibly had some bad weather, and it was supposed to get at it's 'worst' around the time I had to pick Hailee up from school. So I picked her up early, and of course..the weather wasn't bad AT ALL(thankfully). I probably looked like a nut going in and getting her early. However, it is better to be safe than sorry and I wasn't going to play around with any bit of a storm system that created that beast of a tornado a day prior to it coming here.
Picture Source: Wordpress.com
Article Source: http://www.firstcoastnews.com/weather/blog.aspx
FB Pictures/Documents Page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Pictures-and-Documents-found-after-the-April-27-2011-Tornadoes/162443980482277