After some headway to remove all the down branches and massive hundred-year old oaks and cottonwoods that were felled by the storm on June 9th, the landscape is now more open and forever changed. What is the noticeable difference at first is the mounds of wood chips left from branches and limbs and broken branches that were left handing from some of the trees up top. That twisting where trunks were splintered and broken off completely started at about 30 feet. Never-the-less, the parks and recreation crew have done an amazing job with clean up and the park is beginning to return to normal less about 60 big majestic trees that are still around in sawdust and wood chips. Life goes on!
The National Weather Service did investigate a possible fourth location to determine if there was only straight line winds or a tornado that caused damage. And---the results were determined that indeed, a fourth tornado had touched down. Of course the difference between a funnel cloud and a tornado is the point at which that funnel cloud in the air does, in fact, touch ground, thus making it a tornado and no longer just a funnel cloud.
And---as I still say from compass headings of tree stumps ranging from 060 to 330 degrees at the park, that a EF0 tornado could have caused some of the damage in the Old Lake Highlands, Casa Linda and Lakewood areas. I am not a weatherman, nor do I hold out to be one, but I have been raised to watch, observe and learn what weather can teach you. I would hate to tell you how many times growing up when I was pulled out of bed during the night and loaded into the car as we raced five miles to my grandfathers farm where he had a massive storm cellar. Mom was afraid of storms having lived through a couple of tornadoes herself.
I was away at college the last time she narrowly missed a Palm Sunday tornado when we lived in the Great Lakes area. That tornado missed our house by a margin of two city blocks. Later, the duplex I lived out of school had been on that same path of the storm, I could still find shards of glass and tile stuck in some of the rafters of that house's attic 5 years later. That duplex was only a mile from mom and dad's house that was missed in that Palm Sunday tornado. By-the-way, that same storm did hit the house of our local CBS-TV weatherman who lived on the street two blocks from mom and dad's.
The point is---you learn about weather. It can save your life. You never take weather for granted.
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| Swallowtail Butterfly on Dill |
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| Beauty on the wing |
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| Great White Egret Fishing in a Reed Bed |
