The New Toto in Illinois

Sure this dog, Chase, is a little bit bigger than Toto, but like Toto this dog was swept up in a tornado!

The full story and video can be found at http://cbs2chicago.com/watercooler/tornado.lifts.dog.2.743773.html.

This poor doggie was swept up out of his back yard, flown through the air, and tossed into the woods. Thankfully, he's okay now.

My only question is why is the dog in the back yard during a tornado? I guess if the family wasn't home to get him? I hope they weren't home. :(

Fort Worth Hail Storm

Tonight we had a lovely little storm come through. I took Andie to the park an hour and a half earlier and the storm clouds coming in signaled that we should get on home.

The storm didn't hit until later (about 7:50 or so where I live) and it was nasty.

The first picture was taken from my front porch. It shows my neighbor's side yard and you can see the hail on her driveway.

Thank goodness that the hail wasn't bigger because it would have done major damage (wondering if this stuff killed my banana plants that were only 2 inches high or so) like holes in roofs and such.

When the hail was coming down it was very scary. I was in the bathroom with Andie (in the tub) and we had the TV going and the radar going on the laptop. I shut all the doors I could in the house in case it was grapefruit size like they reported west of here. It sounded large and scary, but it was only about nickel to quarter size.

The second picture is of the swail on the side of my house. The hail itself is not as deep as my swail (about 6-8 inches). What that is, is the largest cup of ice water ever. I'm not sure how that worked, but there you have it. I stuck my hand down in it and it was just like ice water except dirtier.

The third picture is of the hail up close. I grabbed some right after the pounding on my roof stopped and I put it in the freezer. I put the quarter next to it for reference. That make the hail look a bit bigger than quarter size!

Loveliness.

Glad that's over and I'm praying that there's no damage on the roof!


They said that there was a tornado that touched down not far west of here. Oh yeah, you know it's bad when the sky turns green. It's the third time I saw the sky turn green since I've lived here. The first time was the huge hail storm on May 5, 1995. The second was the tornado that hit downtown Fort Worth. This was my third. It never turns out good when the sky is green.

More on Tornadoes

Some more tornadoes in our area. Not as close as the last time, but still ... too close for comfort. I found a web site of live streaming tornado chasers after the guy who does this called into one of the TV news shows that is only talking about the bad weather. [As a side note, it was funny watching the national Weather Channel vs. the local ... the Weather Channel kept saying that people needed to get into their basements ... like we're living in the midwest ... not very many have basements around here ... I don't know anyone, in fact.]

The live tracking can be found at http://www.tornadovideos.net/index.cfm/do/s.LiveTracker and their main site is http://www.tornadovideos.net/.

They have cool videos, live tracking, good pictures, and even offer tours/storm chasing (thought of you, Sandy!).

Tornado

Well, I guess tornado season has officially started. This is a photo of the tornado that was a couple of miles from where I work yesterday. We had to duck and cover for about 20 minutes and when the "all clear" was announced I went straight to our little courtyard area. From what I could see it was blue skies and sunny. So strange! Later on, when I went outside and could see a wider area of sky, you could still see dark clouds not too far off, but still sunny, blue skies right above.

I also found this article with amazing photos of tornadoes today in the Daily Mail. Here's just one example of their cool tornado photos:


(click the photo to see the article and more super deluxe cool photos)