So, yeah. Got home from vacation today. As I turned on to my street, I started noticing lots of downed trees.

Pulled into my drive, and saw that my neighbors tree had come down, took out my garden, bounced off my garage, and crushed my mulching pen.

On the other side of the house, the mellon patch is DEAD. Corn and beans should pull through, but the other plants (peppers, tomatoes, squash) are toasted. Appearently there was an inch of hail that came down and took everything out. Depending on who you ask in the neighbor hood, there was either just viscious storms or a small twister that bounced down the street. I have seen them here, so I guess it is not unheard of.

I am really glad I trimmed my trees a few weeks ago, I did not loose any.

The 914 is okay (was in the garage) and the Jeep (in the drive way) was covered in downed tree parts, but unharmed.

Hell of a home-coming.

Zach

Shucks, that's just a normal summer afternoon here in North Texas.

Back on 5-20-08 we had a tornado which came thru or neighborhood I had a
few trees come down in our backyard (10 trees total), lucky none on them hit
the house.

Click to view attachment

That root ball was 25" in Dia.

It did rain really hard a few times with lots of lightning, but I dont remember the tornado. Sound like you are very lucky, better the garden than the house Anyway your homeowners insurance probably has your garden insured up to 30K with a 500 dollar deductable

did you get yours runnin yet??

joe

When I was a kid growing up in Tx, I spent plenty of time in the bath tub with a matress over top until the twister passed by.

They are rare on the right coast, but I guess they do happen from time to time. if it actually was a tornado, it was small. I'll have to put off some of the clean up till later. I have exams tomorrow, and a presentation at work.

Zach

Yeah but did your calipers arrive?

Yes, but I had to dig to get them.

They were under tree matter, and part of someone's chair.
The box was a little beat up, I have not yet checked the contents yet. Studying. I'll look into that stuff tomorrow night after work and classes.

Zach

Studying?

You mean there's more important things than boxes of Porsche parts? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

Just keep those twisters on your side of the lake please.
Very glad to hear that you had no serious problems.

Be sure to have your house roof checked for hail damage.

Zach,

When did the twister hit? On Thurs July 17 there was a nasty storm in Allentown about 6pm. Saw the storm coming from the 3rd floor windows at work and I've never seen clouds so low and so black. I got caught in part of the storm in my 914.

There were trees down in one town and by the time I got home the sun was out.

Spoke

I don't know. I was way north on vacation. I did not even know that there was a storm until I got home monday afternoon to find my neighbors yard occupying my space.

Depending on who you ask, the storm was either "just a bitch'n storm with huge hail" - the pizza guy, "huge wind shear" - mother in law, or "a tornado that went up the street" - next door neighbor.

We got a pretty violent storm at the lake Friday night, but I don't know if the two were connected. We got thunderstorms almost every night last week.

Zach

Good to hear your house or anything wasn't damaged by it. Particularly the teener.

I remember when I was still an over the road truck driver, I was headed West on I-70 thru Kansas, and it was storming like a bitch. Rain was coming down so fast and hard I could barely see 30 feet in front of me. So I'm creeping along at about 25 MPH when out of nowhere a tornado drops right in front of me. I swear I got stopped right in the middle of the damn thing. I just set the air brakes and flashers as fast as I could and dove into my sleeper, face down on the bed.

The truck was shaking so bad I thought it was gonna tip over, but I was lucky to have a 41,000 pound load, so altogether my rig was around 80,000. It couldn't have been a very strong tornado though, because after it was about a mile behind me, I got out and walked around my truck. The only damage was my blind (passenger) side mirror had been torn off and the hood latch on the same side had been ripped loose. I then looked behind me to see if any cars had been flipped but couldn't see anything, so I got back in, notified dispatch what happened, checked the skies to make sure it wasn't raining cars, then went on my way.

About 2 hours after the incident, the reality of how fortunate I was sunk in and I thanked my lucky stars. I later learned that it was classified an F1 and had I been driving anything other than my rig, I could have been in a very nasty situation.