The 2012 North Texas Tornado Outbreak - Being in the middle of the action is NOT fun.
It's a few days late, but oh well. I've written about this on my DA journal but I just realized that I never wrote anything about it on my ACTUAL journal. I've been neglecting this thing for such a long time and I'm sorry to my LJ friends.
I'm sure that all of you, no matter what part of the country you're in, heard about the tornadoes we got down here in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area on Tuesday. One of them hit Arlington, which is where I live. We've been declared a disaster area and 400 homes were either damaged or completely destroyed. My house was only about a mile or two away from the tornado's path. It BARELY missed Michelle and Bree's house, and it wasn't until a couple days ago that we found out it picked up in the PARKING LOT of Bree's high school. Let me say that again:
It picked up IN THE PARKING LOT OF BREE'S HIGH SCHOOL. It was only a few hundred yards away from the building. An EF-2 which meant winds of around 120 MPH. The school was in lock down at the time with all of the students in the first floor hallways taking cover, but I hate to think what would have happened if the building had actually been hit.
In the original forecast for that day the bad weather wasn't predicted to come until later in the afternoon/evening. Because of that, my mom and I went out to our chiropractor appointments and to do a couple errands in the morning before the weather moved in. Little did we know the storms were moving in several hours early, and a tornadic (wtf, why does my computer's dictionary not have "tornadic" in it? It's a word!) super cell was heading straight for our part of Arlington (southwest).
We were in the middle of eating our lunch when the sirens started going off. We were at a cafeteria that had all plate glass windows in the dining area which is about the worst kind of environment you could be in for that kind of weather next to a mobile home. After the initial scare of the sirens starting up I fumbled with my phone to get to my Weather Channel app to see what was going on. I read out loud (so the rest of the people in the dining room could hear) that our part of Arlington was under a tornado warning with a confirmed tornado on the ground headed toward Dalworthington Gardens and Pantego. I live in Dalworthington Gardens.
When we looked back out the windows, sirens still blaring, the sky was absolutely BLACK. I've lived in North Texas all of my life and I have never seen clouds as dark as the ones we had that day, and the darkest part was headed straight toward the area where our house was. Another two people at the window spotted a funnel cloud go down and jump back up in that exact direction as well. My biggest fear in the world is our home being completely destroyed by a tornado and us losing everything and/or each other, so I was probably white as a sheet at that moment. I really don't know what's scarier -- taking shelter inside your home or watching it head straight for your home and there's nothing you can do but watch.
We called my dad and he thankfully answered, because we had to let him know to take Sushi into the bathroom and take cover IMMEDIATELY. We haven't had an easily heard siren in our neighborhood for years and with my dad getting hard of hearing there was no way in hell he could hear the sirens going off. He can't even hear smoke and carbon monoxide alarms because of their pitch.
I ended up acting as the weather man for everyone in the restaurant because nobody knew how to read a freaking radar. HOW can you live in this part of the country and not know what a HOOK ECHO is?! Hell, these people even thought it was novel that I had a radar on my phone! Once I had told them to calm down about the other clouds whisping downward because they were just scud, they were listening to everything I said. They asked me where I thought the tornado was on the radar and I pointed to the southeast corner of the storm saying "If I had to take a guess, I'd think it's around here. It looks like it's trying to form a hook echo."
"What's a hook echo?"
o.o
So I had to explain that hook echos are REALLY REALLY BAD. Then with the next radar refresh there was a clear hook echo in the exact place where I had predicted one would form. I really wish I hadn't been right. By then the employees were telling us that if we had to take shelter that everyone was to get in the freezers and NOT the bathrooms. To be honest I'd much much rather be in an industrial walk in freezer during a tornado than a bathroom, that's for sure.
Right after that I looked back out the window and the clouds were rotating right in front of us. I'd never seen rotation like that in person, and it was terrifying me because I could tell the storm was trying to drop another funnel. I'm convinced that if it had, our house would probably have been demolished with the direction in which it was headed.
Once the blackest part of the clouds had moved off to the north and the sirens had stopped (they had sounded a total of four times so far at that point), I checked the radar again and saw that we had a window of time between the super cell that had just passed by and a squall line that was coming in from the west. My mom and I ran out to my car and I started booking it home. When we were stopped at a light the sirens started going off again and I was FREAKING OUT. I had NEVER wanted to be behind the wheel of a car when tornado sirens were going off.
We got home in one piece (and managed to dodge some sizable hail, thank God for the sake of my car). Once we were able to see a TV I watched in horror as the cell that had just passed by our home headed into north Arlington toward DFW airport with a HORRENDOUS hook echo on it along with a debris ball. A debris ball is when a tornado is so strong it sucks up enough debris up into the clouds for radars to pick up on it, so it looks like a little pink/purple ball at the end of the hook echo. At the same time there was another confirmed decently large tornado hitting southern Dallas County, and that one would end up being the strongest of all of them that day at an EF-3 (winds of over 150MPH). That is also the tornado that tossed around the tractor trailers in the video that I'm sure most of you have seen if you're stateside. The news later said those things weighed 17,000 pounds each. One of them landed on a house in Dallas but thankfully nobody was home.
Once we heard from Michelle and Bree that they were both okay I saw on the news that one of the hardest hit areas was within a few blocks of my chiropractor's office, so I called to make sure they were all okay. I've been seeing Dr. Milne and her staff since 2009 and I consider them friends, so I was worried about them. Dr. Milne answered the phone as she had had the calls to the clinic forward to her cell. It apparently barely missed THEM as well. She told me that all of them were looking at the sky out of the back porch of the clinic (it's a converted old house) when they actually heard the roaring freight train sound and had to run for cover. The houses across the street from the clinic were damaged and several large trees were uprooted from the median as well.
The tornado that hit Arlington had hit Kennedale first, which is a town immediately to our south. When news crews made it out there to survey the damage there were several destroyed homes. One of the lesser damaged houses had six foot long fence slats impaled into one of its interior walls after they had flown through the front windows like torpedoes. They hit the wall with such force that they went halfway through; three feet on one side of the wall and three feet on the other. If anyone had been in the way they would have been impaled.
Amazingly, nobody was killed. It's something all of the news coverage has marveled about. There was only one critical injury and other than that, I believe there were 12 injuries in Arlington. DFW airport, Lancaster, and Forney were also hit. Forney had the most damage with some homes that were completely decimated.
My mom and I didn't find out until later that evening that Arlington had actually been under a tornado EMERGENCY, not just a tornado warning. Not only that, but Dallas county had been under a tornado emergency at the exact same time, which is unheard of. For anyone who isn't well-versed in tornado terms, tornado emergencies are rare and are only issued when a sizable tornado is headed straight for a heavily populated area. I'm glad I wasn't home when that was issued because I don't know what I would have done. Ignorance is indeed bliss sometimes.
Thanks to cell phone cameras there was an ungodly amount of video footage of all of the tornadoes, Arlington's included. There were several bits of damage and video footage that looked like something straight out of the movie Twister. I know Arlington has been declared a disaster area by Rick Perry (eugh) and I believe Lancaster, Kennedale, and Forney were also declared disaster areas. The Red Cross has been here for a few days now to maintain shelters for those whose homes were destroyed. The next day Al Roeker was here broadcasting from Arlington right down the street from Bree's high school for both the Weather Channel's Wake Up With Al and The Today Show.
Our local NBC station's website, NBCDFW.com, has good storm damage footage as well as the video of the tractor trailers being tossed around if any of you are interested in seeing the damage from a local perspective.
We haven't had a tornado event like this since March 28, 2000 (I remember the exact date because it was my un-birthday) when a tornado picked up and skipped over the top of our house and came down again a few miles away. That was also the day that another tornado hit downtown Ft. Worth and blew the windows out of several sky scrapers. It was 12 years since then almost to the day that this happened, and I hope it's at least another 12 years before anything like this happens in Arlington again. The experience shaved a good 5 years off of my life, I swear. We were very, VERY lucky that we didn't lose our home, nor did Michelle and Bree. Bree is probably the luckiest of all of us with only being missed by a few hundred yards.
All of us already had weather alert radios in our homes. The next day I bought one to keep in my glove box with a bag of batteries ready in case anything like that ever happens again and we are away from the house.
I'm sure that all of you, no matter what part of the country you're in, heard about the tornadoes we got down here in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area on Tuesday. One of them hit Arlington, which is where I live. We've been declared a disaster area and 400 homes were either damaged or completely destroyed. My house was only about a mile or two away from the tornado's path. It BARELY missed Michelle and Bree's house, and it wasn't until a couple days ago that we found out it picked up in the PARKING LOT of Bree's high school. Let me say that again:
It picked up IN THE PARKING LOT OF BREE'S HIGH SCHOOL. It was only a few hundred yards away from the building. An EF-2 which meant winds of around 120 MPH. The school was in lock down at the time with all of the students in the first floor hallways taking cover, but I hate to think what would have happened if the building had actually been hit.
In the original forecast for that day the bad weather wasn't predicted to come until later in the afternoon/evening. Because of that, my mom and I went out to our chiropractor appointments and to do a couple errands in the morning before the weather moved in. Little did we know the storms were moving in several hours early, and a tornadic (wtf, why does my computer's dictionary not have "tornadic" in it? It's a word!) super cell was heading straight for our part of Arlington (southwest).
We were in the middle of eating our lunch when the sirens started going off. We were at a cafeteria that had all plate glass windows in the dining area which is about the worst kind of environment you could be in for that kind of weather next to a mobile home. After the initial scare of the sirens starting up I fumbled with my phone to get to my Weather Channel app to see what was going on. I read out loud (so the rest of the people in the dining room could hear) that our part of Arlington was under a tornado warning with a confirmed tornado on the ground headed toward Dalworthington Gardens and Pantego. I live in Dalworthington Gardens.
When we looked back out the windows, sirens still blaring, the sky was absolutely BLACK. I've lived in North Texas all of my life and I have never seen clouds as dark as the ones we had that day, and the darkest part was headed straight toward the area where our house was. Another two people at the window spotted a funnel cloud go down and jump back up in that exact direction as well. My biggest fear in the world is our home being completely destroyed by a tornado and us losing everything and/or each other, so I was probably white as a sheet at that moment. I really don't know what's scarier -- taking shelter inside your home or watching it head straight for your home and there's nothing you can do but watch.
We called my dad and he thankfully answered, because we had to let him know to take Sushi into the bathroom and take cover IMMEDIATELY. We haven't had an easily heard siren in our neighborhood for years and with my dad getting hard of hearing there was no way in hell he could hear the sirens going off. He can't even hear smoke and carbon monoxide alarms because of their pitch.
I ended up acting as the weather man for everyone in the restaurant because nobody knew how to read a freaking radar. HOW can you live in this part of the country and not know what a HOOK ECHO is?! Hell, these people even thought it was novel that I had a radar on my phone! Once I had told them to calm down about the other clouds whisping downward because they were just scud, they were listening to everything I said. They asked me where I thought the tornado was on the radar and I pointed to the southeast corner of the storm saying "If I had to take a guess, I'd think it's around here. It looks like it's trying to form a hook echo."
"What's a hook echo?"
o.o
So I had to explain that hook echos are REALLY REALLY BAD. Then with the next radar refresh there was a clear hook echo in the exact place where I had predicted one would form. I really wish I hadn't been right. By then the employees were telling us that if we had to take shelter that everyone was to get in the freezers and NOT the bathrooms. To be honest I'd much much rather be in an industrial walk in freezer during a tornado than a bathroom, that's for sure.
Right after that I looked back out the window and the clouds were rotating right in front of us. I'd never seen rotation like that in person, and it was terrifying me because I could tell the storm was trying to drop another funnel. I'm convinced that if it had, our house would probably have been demolished with the direction in which it was headed.
Once the blackest part of the clouds had moved off to the north and the sirens had stopped (they had sounded a total of four times so far at that point), I checked the radar again and saw that we had a window of time between the super cell that had just passed by and a squall line that was coming in from the west. My mom and I ran out to my car and I started booking it home. When we were stopped at a light the sirens started going off again and I was FREAKING OUT. I had NEVER wanted to be behind the wheel of a car when tornado sirens were going off.
We got home in one piece (and managed to dodge some sizable hail, thank God for the sake of my car). Once we were able to see a TV I watched in horror as the cell that had just passed by our home headed into north Arlington toward DFW airport with a HORRENDOUS hook echo on it along with a debris ball. A debris ball is when a tornado is so strong it sucks up enough debris up into the clouds for radars to pick up on it, so it looks like a little pink/purple ball at the end of the hook echo. At the same time there was another confirmed decently large tornado hitting southern Dallas County, and that one would end up being the strongest of all of them that day at an EF-3 (winds of over 150MPH). That is also the tornado that tossed around the tractor trailers in the video that I'm sure most of you have seen if you're stateside. The news later said those things weighed 17,000 pounds each. One of them landed on a house in Dallas but thankfully nobody was home.
Once we heard from Michelle and Bree that they were both okay I saw on the news that one of the hardest hit areas was within a few blocks of my chiropractor's office, so I called to make sure they were all okay. I've been seeing Dr. Milne and her staff since 2009 and I consider them friends, so I was worried about them. Dr. Milne answered the phone as she had had the calls to the clinic forward to her cell. It apparently barely missed THEM as well. She told me that all of them were looking at the sky out of the back porch of the clinic (it's a converted old house) when they actually heard the roaring freight train sound and had to run for cover. The houses across the street from the clinic were damaged and several large trees were uprooted from the median as well.
The tornado that hit Arlington had hit Kennedale first, which is a town immediately to our south. When news crews made it out there to survey the damage there were several destroyed homes. One of the lesser damaged houses had six foot long fence slats impaled into one of its interior walls after they had flown through the front windows like torpedoes. They hit the wall with such force that they went halfway through; three feet on one side of the wall and three feet on the other. If anyone had been in the way they would have been impaled.
Amazingly, nobody was killed. It's something all of the news coverage has marveled about. There was only one critical injury and other than that, I believe there were 12 injuries in Arlington. DFW airport, Lancaster, and Forney were also hit. Forney had the most damage with some homes that were completely decimated.
My mom and I didn't find out until later that evening that Arlington had actually been under a tornado EMERGENCY, not just a tornado warning. Not only that, but Dallas county had been under a tornado emergency at the exact same time, which is unheard of. For anyone who isn't well-versed in tornado terms, tornado emergencies are rare and are only issued when a sizable tornado is headed straight for a heavily populated area. I'm glad I wasn't home when that was issued because I don't know what I would have done. Ignorance is indeed bliss sometimes.
Thanks to cell phone cameras there was an ungodly amount of video footage of all of the tornadoes, Arlington's included. There were several bits of damage and video footage that looked like something straight out of the movie Twister. I know Arlington has been declared a disaster area by Rick Perry (eugh) and I believe Lancaster, Kennedale, and Forney were also declared disaster areas. The Red Cross has been here for a few days now to maintain shelters for those whose homes were destroyed. The next day Al Roeker was here broadcasting from Arlington right down the street from Bree's high school for both the Weather Channel's Wake Up With Al and The Today Show.
Our local NBC station's website, NBCDFW.com, has good storm damage footage as well as the video of the tractor trailers being tossed around if any of you are interested in seeing the damage from a local perspective.
We haven't had a tornado event like this since March 28, 2000 (I remember the exact date because it was my un-birthday) when a tornado picked up and skipped over the top of our house and came down again a few miles away. That was also the day that another tornado hit downtown Ft. Worth and blew the windows out of several sky scrapers. It was 12 years since then almost to the day that this happened, and I hope it's at least another 12 years before anything like this happens in Arlington again. The experience shaved a good 5 years off of my life, I swear. We were very, VERY lucky that we didn't lose our home, nor did Michelle and Bree. Bree is probably the luckiest of all of us with only being missed by a few hundred yards.
All of us already had weather alert radios in our homes. The next day I bought one to keep in my glove box with a bag of batteries ready in case anything like that ever happens again and we are away from the house.