Tornado touched down in my county this morning
2 years ago
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Tornado Outbreak last night - SW of Dallas Area
Comments (2)Oh, so glad to hear you are safe. I didn't see the news until after 11:30 last night because I was watching the OKC Thunder vs Memphis basketball game. I record the 10 p.m. news, mostly to catch the weather reports.before I hit the sack. Was horrified by the weather report down your way. So glad you are okay. Anyone on this forum know of anyone who lives in the areas hit? I thought you lived south of Dallas. I had a close friend who was from Richardson. Lost contact with her a number of years ago. We both grew up and grew apart. There was a Dude Ranch there that we went to for her class reunion. Fun! Was there much of a warning? The devastation I saw last night was pretty bad. Looked like it crossed through mostly rural communities and areas. We just got a bit of a sprinkling, but supposed to get the really hairy stuff this weekend with grapefruit-sized hail and all that groovy stuff. Swell....there goes my garden! Probably beat all the rose blooms and irises to smithereens. And my peonies are starting to open. They are so beautiful this year. There is something wrong with my camera so I cannot take ay pictures and that is VERY frustrating. Glad you are okay, honey. Your friend north of the river, ~Annie...See MoreTornado Watch for SE OK Counties
Comments (7)Diane, That's true, and I'll keep posting the warnings whenever I come inside and check the weather and see them. Hopefully Larry and Busy1 have better weather radio signals than you had when you lived in LeFlore County. I thought of your old place and the issues with the NOAA alert radios not working a few weeks ago. We were at a big wildfire in NW Love County, near the Orr community, and we were so far out in the boonies that radio communications with the county dispatcher were sketchy to non-existent, as was cell phone service. Of course, all of us who were there could communicate with one another via the emergency radios, but we couldn't communicate with anyone else in the county via radio or with anyone at all via cell phone. (If you climbed a high hill, you had a chance of being able to pick up at least part of a radio dispatch from the dispatcher.) It reminded me of your NOAA weather radio issues. I had noticed the same problem last fall when we were at a fundraiser for the Orr VFD....once we reached a certain distance west of Marietta, neither radios nor cell phones worked any more. It was just peculiar. You get used to having the ability to communicate with someone 24/7 and then suddenly you're in an area where that doesn't exist. With the fire I previously mentioned, I had told Tim and Chris, who both were at work in Dallas, via text message that we were en route to a big fire west of town, so it drove them crazy for a couple of hours that they couldn't communicate with me to find out what was going on. I had a few text messages from them when I returned to civilization. It is easy to forget it now, but when we moved here in mid-winter of 1999, there was no cell phone service in our part of the county and it would be about 5 more years before we had reliable cell phone service at our house. For a while, we had cell phone service as close as the street in front of our house, so if you wanted to make a phone call you had to walk a few hunded feet down the driveway to the roadway. Then, later on, the cell signal reached our front porch and living room, but nowhere else. Now, we've hit the big time, and have cell phone service on all parts of our property...and it only took 11 or 12 years for it to improve to that point! Today that line of storms is wreaking havoc across the south and southeast. I think we're lucky here that they started so far east and moved on before they could cause much damage. Some areas in Texas a bit east/southeast of our house had golfball-sized hall when these storms kicked up, and one small tornado damaged a barn. I would have been happy to have any kind of weather if only it would have brought us some rain! Dawn...See MoreTornado, Severe T-Storm, Hail Updates Here
Comments (29)Suzie, It is a sad story about the firefighter. They haven't released a lot of details, but I think he was involved in a fire truck burnover, which is when a wind-driven wildfire overtakes a firetruck and literally burns right over it/through it/around it. My husband and our Asst. Chief survived one of those a couple of years ago and it happened while I was watching. The only "good" thing about it was that the fire moved so fast that by the time it registered in my brain that fire had overtaken his truck, he'd driven out of the fire safely and the fire was running towards the interstate and he turned and 'chased' it from behind. I hope to never see anything like that again. The big fire west of Fort Worth is near Possum Kingdom Lake in very rough and rugged terrain. The last I heard, about 30 homes there had burned and over 200 more were at risk and had been evacuated. Possum Kingdom State Park had been closed, and some roads were closed. There's also a huge complex of fires in the Wichita Falls area that involves at least 3 separate very large, major wildfires. Homes have burned there and evacuations have occurred. Some Love County firefighters are in the county next to Wichita Falls helping fight a different fire complex near Henrietta, TX. Before today's fires, Texas had had about a half-million acres burn just in the last 7 or 8 days. There's no telling what that number will be after they total up all the acreage today. Our VFD only had two brief fire calls today so I consider us very fortuante indeed because it could have been so much worse. Our county's burn ban expires next week and I hope the commissioners renew it (though I don't think they will because burn bans are very unpopular with some of their constituents). Carol, Our mesonet station goes out every time the wind gusts over 20 mph. It is out even when no one else's stations are malfunctioning. It drives me up the wall. Our wind was like a ocean today....choppy and full of big waves interspersed with periods of calm. As sundown approached, it seemed to calm down a lot...then began gusting really hard again. It can't seem to make up its mind what to do. The little wildlife puddle in our driveway had little choppy whitecaps. The birds bathed in it anyway. There was a big wreck on I35 in Gainesville this afternoon caused by the wind blowing tractor-trailer trucks around. Gainesville's highest recorded gust was 53 and ours was 54. Our weather is very similar to theirs, so when the Burneyville mesonet station malfunctions, I just check the station at the Gainesville Airport. I'm watching the 10 p.m. newscast and Steve LaNore just said we'll have near-record lows here tonight. Oh good, just what we needed. Also, he said the wind returns Sunday, so I'll try to get a lot done tomorrow in case Sunday's weather is yucky. Dawn...See MoreAnything between 'don't touch a thing' and 'tear it down'?
Comments (18)For your project to succeed (fiscally and functionally) you need a talented architect and perhaps a structural engineer. What exists between tear down and do nothing? A world of possibilities. I am a preservation carpenter. I am privileged to have worked with some wonderful homeowners (and many less than!). When they are really committed to the project, wonderful things can happen. In this example, and architect had been retained, but facts on the ground presented themselves as we tore into the building that actually made it more desirable to abandon the 1920's remodeling to an "open concept" and replace the walls as they had been built in 1817. The structure of the house had been severely compromised by the "opening up" of the rooms. Who'da think? There was a 7" sag in this poplar summer-beam. It is the attic floor. It got a steel I-beam dividing it into two half-spans. The second floor framing was all sistered, and four steel columns support the deck. The first floor framing was entirely replaced, and eight footings for posts to support it were added in the basement. A new ledger was bolted to the masonry walls front and rear. The end result: This work also added three new full baths, reframed the entire roof (from beneath, as the standing seam metal roofs were only 10 years old). No kitchen work (except paint, new disposal, some plumbing repairs to tie in to the rest of the house, as that was completely new). The finishes included some very nice touches; Central A/C, keeping the old hot-water radiators; Original windows kept, weatherstripped with spring bronze and new locks; millwork to match original profiles; the old first floor boards all were carefully taken up, re-milled, and re-installed with some new reclaimed heart pine worked in. The second and attic floors were retained in place and just cleaned and waxed. We were able to pull this house back from the brink, literally. It was collapsing in the very center. All this was accomplished for 1/3 the cost of the house. That made good economic sense for the homeowners (and the historic tax credit doesn't hurt either). The house is in a village that is entirely a National Historic _Lamdmark_ district. And the work had to be approved for its authenticity and appropriateness. So even this level of gutting/restoration to an authentic prior appearance _can be done_ if it's carried out by thoughtful and skilled people. Banish the thought from your head that "it can't be that bad" because it probably is worse. Casey Here is a link that might be useful: Photobucket of this house, others...See More- 2 years agolast modified: 2 years ago
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