(Untitled)

[aerlewis]

So...that* was kind of terrifying.  There was one that touched down in Falls Church...

...and we had to wander out to the main road, and across to retrieve our errant recycling bin, which only stopped where it was because of a chain link fence...

Trees on Hernon Parkway are down, and the light at HP and Elden is out.

*a line of storms going through

Comments

[aerlewis]

We have a great system as well, email, text, phone calls etc, but there wasn't time with this.

Matt called me around 2:45 saying that he was on the way home, and that there was a tornado warning. Less than 5 minutes later (because he was home within 10 minutes of the call) the weather went bananas. It only lasted for 10 or 15 minutes, but wow.

Fantastic quote from Pepco (power company for DC and MD):

"It went from, like 60 customers out on the whole system to like 32,000" in about 10 minutes, Dobkin said. "We'll see it go up some more as it crosses Prince George's."

[rdaisygal]

We got our email at 9pm last night.

[aerlewis]

Mine appears to have hit my inbox at 9:28... :)

[edailey]

Did they keep the kids???????????????

[aerlewis]

Yeah they did. They did a tornado drill and everything. No homework binders came home today, I'm guessing because there wasn't time to do it once the warning went into affect...

When they posted on the emergency announcement site around 5 it was to say that they had kept all of the kids in buildings starting at about 2:45, and that they would be anywhere up to 90 minutes late after taking F*cked up traffic into account.

[dianelewis18]

Nice. A couple weeks ago we had some tornadoes touch down near Perris (which is like 15 miles from our house). My cousin Blake's wife Brittney was on the freeway and saw the damn thing in her rear view mirror! Luckily no one was seriously injured, but we thought it was the end of days, brimstone and fire, etc etc.

I'm glad you guys all survived!!

[aerlewis]

Did you know that Perris has one of the few vertical wind tunnels in the US? We just stumbled on that one the other day...

[gizabeth]

I had left work (high schools get out at 2:05) and was in the supermarket when everything hit. We had no idea, it looked fine when I went into the store, but as I stood in line at the checkout the wind started blowing trees sideways and then everything went white b/c of the rain. The power went out and everyone was very upbeat mostly b/c no one wanted to leave the store so we didn't mind standing in line. I called B and he just told me to pick up ice since we had already lost power. We still have no power.

Now had I stayed at work I wouldn've been on lockdown. BTW our school has been hit twice by tornadoes so they take it seriously. We also did have too many kids left.

[aerlewis]

Yeah, I'd seen the HS kids outside when Matt called, which is really why I panicked about Maddie.

Let us know if you need anything...

[gizabeth]

Actually we have gas so I can still use the stove top and we still have hot water so it's just keeping the food on ice. Of course we're kicking ourselves for not having bought a BBQ yet.

[aerlewis]

Um! Our Safeway down in Alexandria always carried dry ice...!! They usually had it in a freestanding cooler in the freezer aisle, so that might be something to look for...

Father's Day is coming, so there may be BBQs on sale right about now...and even if they aren't, they're really not expensive at WalMart. This one is pretty close to what we currently have, and we love it...which is to say that it hasn't set itself on fire like the old grill eventually did...