[X] My Assistant

[belleraphon1]

Sincerely hope all you UMSFers on the West Coast are OK! Read Emily's blog....
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001576/

Widfires and now an earthquake... scary...

Concern from an Ohioan who only worries about getting snowed in once or twice a winter season.

Craig

p.s. With global climate change this forum may get a few posts or two in this century!

[dvandorn]

Well, I'm home, everything is just fine here. No damage whatsoever right here. I did drive the mile or so down the road to where there were reported touchdowns, found a nice neat line of uprooted trees (a couple had dropped back down onto adjacent homes, breaking them up a bit), found a local record store closed for tornado damage where the owner reported to me that the roof had lifted off the building and then settled back down -- you could see the front wall of the building bowing out towards the street near the top. Tons of store windows blown out, glass all over the roadway, uprooted trees trees blocking streets, etc.

Apparently, observers in the top stories of the 70-some-story IDS Tower in downtown Mpls saw the funnel (by this time not on the ground) go by, with entrained debris *above* them at their 600-some-foot vantage point. As the funnel collapsed completely, they watched the debris fall out of the sky and onto the streets below. (Sorry, Dan, no cows -- just tree branches and such.)

Overall, the damage was limited to a few very small areas where the twisters actually touched down (on the ground or onto the roofs of buildings), and there have been no reported deaths or serious injuries. I even have power, the cable never went down, etc.

And Dan -- first off, if I thought there was *any* chance I could get a pic of a tornado, I'd be all over it, bosses or no bosses. I have been within a few miles of tornado touchdowns several times in my life, and have never, ever seen a funnel on the ground. It's one of the things I'd like to be able to do before I die. Unfortunately, the actual tornado activity was a good 10 miles away from my workplace, and there was just no way I could sneak out of the building and go looking for it. Especially since no one knew there were actually tornadoes touching down until a good half-hour after the event.

All in all, sort of a fun day!

-the other Doug