Don’t mess with God

Last Wednesday (4 October), a series of storms plowed through my town. It wasn’t really a surprise, we were expecting severe weather all day (and are quite used to it here in central Ohio), but nobody expected how intense it was going to become. 60 mph winds, hail, tornadoes, the works.

Here’s a few pictures I managed to snap before, during, and shortly after the storm:


Meso
Here it comes. The mesocyclone is visible just to the bottom center of the picture. As bad as we had it, the folks about a quarter-mile north of us had the worst damage - whole sides of homes perforated with baseball-sized holes, windows blown out, siding ripped off.

 

Meso negative gradient
Same pic as above, but with a negative gradient to bring out some scary detail in the clouds.

 

it hits
The storm hits suddenly. I was standing right beside these patio chairs when I took the picture of the meso. The wind hit and almost blew me off my feet; I scrambled into the kitchen and snapped this shot right after I got inside. That’s golf-ball sized hail, there.

 

hail
Another quick picture, just outside the front door. This image is extremely stretched; it was black as night outside. After this, I made it to the basement to calm the freaking-out monkeyFam. The house sounded like someone was emptying a machine gun clip into it. Every few seconds a HUGE piece of ice would hit a window… the wife and I were expecting to hear glass breaking at any moment. Note the hail streaks in the image… they are actually being thrown toward the storm. Weird.

 


The worst part of the storm lasted for about 5-10 minutes. Here’s the front yard covered in ice.

 

hailDrift
A couple of hours later, here’s a drift of halfway-melted hail on my back patio…

hailDrift2
…and the same drift after I swirled a hole in it with my foot.

 

birdFortunately, we were spared any major damage (unlike the poor souls about 500-1000 yards north of us). Turns out we just got sideswiped. When I came out the next morning, I found a dead bird on my porch. I kicked him over and snapped this morbid shot.

I guess he didn’t hear the tornado sirens.

Aside from the damage to the homes and birds in the area, lots of the trees were prematurely skinned of their leaves. Normally, around here, peak autumn color is around the third-fourth week of October — but unfortunately, there are not many leaves left. Autumn will be duller than usual this year, and that means that the gray of winter will last a bit longer.

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