This year we have faced…ICE…SNOW…FIRES…HURRICANES…and now this past Friday…TORNADOES. Well, at least we missed the Earthquakes!
As I have said in previous blogs, we have been watching side channels of local over-the-air channels…ones which don’t have political commercials, show older shows. But on Friday I went to Google to look for something and WOW, there was a Tornado Warning for our area! We had just heard a few distance thunder claps coming off the Gulf. I turned to Fox-13 (I know, above says ABC, but they all had the same type of live graphic going), and sure enough, a huge storm hitting the coast from just below Tampa to about 20 miles north of us. When it hit our area, it was strong…straight-line winds and rain, but in under 10 minutes, the storm had passed. The actual tornado warnings were 10 miles to our south, and 10 miles to our northeast….with what I counted as six different warnings…
The latest report that I saw had the actual tornado count at 4. These tornadoes were short lived, unlike the ones I was use to in Arkansas which could go on for miles. A EF-1 tornado touched down Friday afternoon in New Port Richey, around 10 miles to our north. Tornadoes were also confirmed in Spring Hill, 30 miles to our north, Seminole , 30 miles to our south, and Land O'Lakes (20 miles to our east).
The pictures above are from a condo community in Seminole…their clubhouse took a pretty hard hit, and some condos were damaged too. Thank goodness this was not our condo area!
There was widespread damage in various areas along the “RED ZONE” of the storm. Fortunately, we have not heard of anyone that we know having any damage.
I wanted to make sure that the motorhome was ok, so I picked up Bubba, went by the motorhome (upper left picture Bubba is sitting in Marcia’s passenger’s seat), and then over to the Doggie Park (upper right, the person in blue is petting him) where there were more dogs than we have seen all year. Bubba did his three or four laps slowly around the dog park, then he sniffed a few of the dogs, then did one last lap before we left. He sure enjoys those Dog Park trips. We sure wish the Condo Association would allow Bubba to live with us too….
Note: All but the last two pictures of the blog were taken from Google and most from news reports.
