Tuesday afternoon i was in my office and noticed it starting to get dark...I could see the leaves starting to rustle on the trees across the street...Five minutes later I could see absolutely nothing across the two lane street in front of my house...Rain and tree limbs were blowing straight sideways from north to south...In ten minutes the sun was out and all was calm, but the power was off...It came back on a few minutes ago...

A tornado had touched down about a quarter mile from my house...I walked up there this morning to look, and a large oak tree had blown across the street and landed on some power lines...Lots of downed trees and damaged houses here too...I only lost a tree limb...Elsewhere some workers were caught in a house under construction...It collapsed; seven were hospitalized and two died...RIP to some guys just trying to finish a job......Ben

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Cogito, ergo BOOM!...

That's unfortunate. Wife and I went out to lunch and returned home to find lightning had struck the giant oak in our backyard. I sure hope it survives.

Isn't it unusual to get tornadoes that far South in Texas? Maybe I'm thinking of more western parts of the state.

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Release the Kraken

Ain't nuthin like it was. Everything is shifted around.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Very much unusual...It's the first one I've experienced...They're more common in North Texas......Ben

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Cogito, ergo BOOM!...

The condo we live in is about 21-22 years old now, my niece lived there several years then rented it out, then we bought it off her. The electric failed so often when she first moved in that she kept a battery powered clock in every room just so she had accurate time!

We've had one 2-day outage from a water main bursting under a transformer that serviced about 75 condos. It was Springtime and only mildly inconvenient. I have a 4KW generator I haven't even bothered to tie into the furnace, but I have the hardware handy just in case. (I think just the treat of being prepared, chases the outages away!)

Several years ago the power company rearranged the power grid lay-out and the "2-hour drunk hit a pole" outages are even less common, the 8 to 24 hour "Storme Damage" outages are very rare.

Ivan

PS. I'm heartbroken over a building crew getting smashed just doing their jobs!

The job site deaths were in the Chronicle this morning. Glad to hear you made it through okay.

Thanks...The deceased were decent, hard working men...The families are demanding answers as to the lack of timely warning for them...Lawyers will get involved, and somebody will get rich - mostly the lawyers......Ben

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Cogito, ergo BOOM!...