Wednesday’s storms too close for comfort

All day Wednesday I was thinking about how the weather folks had predicted rain all week, and we had very little precipitation to show for it.  I shared this with my dad who lives in West Texas as I was on my way home.  He told me that there was some bad weather coming towards Dallas,

When I got home, the normal ALL WEATHER ALL THE TIME coverage was on T.V.   We flipped back and forth between Fox 4 and Channel 8.  I pride myself as an arm chair meteorologist, so as each station showed the radar, I could tell we might be in for a long night.  

Having lived through a couple of bad tornadoes, I usher my family into the closet as soon as the words 'Tornado Warning' are issued.  As we were clearing out the storm closet, we stopped down on Channel 8's coverage of the storms, as one of their field reporters was getting blow around in downtown Ft. Worth.  It looked like Anderson Cooper's hurricane coverage the way that it was raining sideways and the trees were dancing in the wind.  According to the radar the storm was headed right at us.

As the storm began making its way through our neighborhood, our power immediately went out so we only had KRLD to guide us through.  I was pretty sure we weren't dealing with a tornado, but what I saw was unlike anything I had witnessed before. 

We looked out our window towards the woods behind our house as the wind literally blew trees back and forth as if they were tall blades of grass.  Our fence seemed to be pulling out of the ground, but somehow it managed to say perpendicular.  For about 20 minutes the fierce winds ripped through Oak Cliff damaging trees, power lines, street signs, even tearing the roof off an apartment building.

As soon as the rain let up a bit the whole neighborhood came outside to assess the damage.  Trash cans were blow 200-300 yards away, someone's fence was lying in the street, and campaign signs that held were parallel to the ground.    A drive through the streets let us know how fortunate we were, as downed trees had fallen onto a number of houses.  

This has been a turbulent spring as far as weather is concerned and I'm anxious to get "tornado season" over with.  If straight line winds can do this type of damage, then I'll leave the rotating storms to a less inhabited area.