Everyone pause a moment for Starhill Forest

Powerful storm blasting through Sangamon County and Springfield, IL at this moment as I type.

Have Guy, Edie, their trees and their pets in your thoughts. I hope this beast blows through with little damage to them and their beautiful part of the world.

Yes, those are some powerful storms, they were here earlier today.
The weather has been on the news all day. Emergency sirens going off and everything.
A twister touched down and was doing damage in central Missouri a little while ago. The Sedalia area has been getting hammered. They are moving fast east 45 -50 miles per hour I hear. Downed power lines and trees here have been in the news, no twisters here in the vicinity though.
Please do take cover if you need to.

edit - I forgot to say, there was plenty of rain for the trees! Although, the hail has been very troublesome too. Golfball size and baseball size hail in some places, I've seen video of it on the news, it looks vicious. That size hail will knock you on the head like a hedge-apple!
Guy under the bed, ha!
Sedalia, MO. was hit hard, preliminarily 1 fatality and 2 people missing. An F2 twister went thru there I heard. Now I'm hearing they are moving even faster than that, 55 - 65 mph east/ northeast.

Will


This message was edited Mar 12, 2006 10:35 PM

Bah! A stout prairie inhabitant like Guy won't be at all affected by that little storm! Actually, he will be overcome with glee because of the buckets of rain pouring down on his drought stricken property. I should know, they just left here, and I was one happy camper.

Guy is probably under the bed with the animals and Edie is boarding up the window. All kidding aside, will be glad when that is through there and we hear from them.

Fulton dodged one cell just barely to the south, another cell just to the north. I got called in to the hospital and they called a tornado warning while we were in the OR...that was a little different. Anyone heard from Guy? SB

Spoke to Guy and Edie on the telephone about 7:10 a.m. New Orleans time. They had a little tree damage and are still out of electrical power. The tornado skirted around them and went mostly through Springfield.

Lots of communications infrastructure damage down there, so Guy could be offline. The tornado was in the southern part of Springfield and south of the city, so not near Starhill. We had huge hail here, and 1.7" of rain, which is more than we got in all the time from May-October last year. Wicked storms!

Hi all -- thanks very much for the sincere concern, but we're basically OK and the power is finally back up. Not so good a few miles to the south in Springfield, and all along the corridor from Sedalia northeast. We don't know the full details yet because the news radio station in Springfield was knocked off the air and the Springfield newspaper is down as well. From what we have heard, there were no deaths reported in Springfield. Glad to hear that SB, Will, and Kevin made it through OK too.

As for those buckets of rain, we did get nearly three inches over the past 36 hours, but we still need at least a foot more (just not all at once please!) to bring up the ponds, creeks, and wells. Our own pond is still down about 30 inches, and Rock Creek (a "permanent" stream) has only about two feet of water (but this is its first flowage at all since late July).

There is someone on this forum from Chatham, a SW suburb of Springfield. I can't recall his handle, but he posted a few months ago about growing Albizia. I hope he's OK. That area apparently took the brunt of this.

I'm reminded of a GW thread I started about two years ago regarding our dang continental climate. Never boring.

Guy S.

Good to hear you're OK!

Over here, March has come in like a Polar Bear, more snow this month than during the whole of the rest of the winter

Resin

Well, here we go again. More tornadoes on the ground tonight in Springfield (15 miles south) plus some around Williamsville (10 miles east) and on to the northeast. Power out, roofs gone, trees down, house trailers flying around like drunk ducks, etc. all over central Illinois. Seems to have missed me again, but it's still a long night ahead.

Continental weather is such a delight . . .

Guy S.

Eeek! Thats not a good place for a tree!
Yeah, its been like that in this region too. Sedalia even claims to have been hit by more tornados. It hasn't been like March the 12th, but its still worri-some because one never knows what might happen when the weather is bad.

Recently here, it has been exceptionally warm (upper 70s F), rainy and windy. And that could be a recipe for disaster.

And I'm moving into a mobile home!

Will

Guy and Will, hope you both escape the tornados. Only once when I was 5 years old and Mother and we three children were visiting relatives in Ohio, was I eveer in or near a tornado, it blue down my uncles garage roof onto his car. Made a big impression on me. We are lucky here in this area, have been a couple of either terribly windy storms, that some called a tornado in all my long life living in this area.

My daughter lived in Springfield, IL many years ago when she was starting her life as an attorney, and i visited her there for a week or so.

Donna

Hey, Starhill, take care of yourself and Edie and the critters. And, you tell ME that I live in a weather-hazard area!!

Gosh Guy, the Springfield area doesn't need any more tornadoes.

Viburnum Valley is getting softball size hail. You all should have seen the weather reports on that. I don't think I've ever seen hail bigger than golfballs before. I feel sorry for the people in Kentucky. Imagine the skies dropping mini cannon balls.

All clear at the Valley in Scott County. Blew like mad around 11:00 pm last night, but I don't see any major problems this morning (so far). I'll report back on what's what on my cruise to work today.

Places south and west of here apparently took it much harder while it was still earlier in the day. Say a prayer for those folks, especially around Marion County which had several tornado warnings coming several hours apart as each of three successive line of storms moved through during the day.

Lauren, we had softball sized hail late last summer sometime. I get a new roof sometime here soon, my poor car got all the damage "massaged" out of it...dented the aluminum around the windows, busted a few holes in the vinyl siding corner pieces...it did lots of damage over here. When I took my car out to get it repaired, there was a Benz....broken front and back windows, hood and top of the car looked like somebody took a baseball bat to it. House windows broken all over. Out at my parents, they barely had hail, yet across his timber, the house there suffered major damage. Those people not only get a new roof, but new siding and both cars were totaled.

I hate hail. I was hiking along the Gila River a couple of years ago (yes, looking for rare trees, of course) and about two miles from the car a nasty hailstorm broke out. I luckily found a big piece of cottonwood bark to hold over my head or I might have been killed. When I went back to the river crossing (had to wade across the river from the car to access the canyon) the river had risen from knee height to waist height and was a roaring torrent with a solid layer of one-inch hailstones floating on it! Looked like something out of Star Trek! My friend and I held onto the ends of a stout stick to help each other keep balanced as we crossed.

Guy S.

Can see why each of those three trees failed, due to decay in branch forks - whether it would have been visible before they came down isn't so sure, though.

What size is a softball? Is that the same as a basketball?

Hi Resin,

A softball is almost exactly the same size as a big grapefruit. You definitely don't want you, anyone you know, nor anything you own from getting hit with a chunk of ice that big falling from 30,000 feet!

Scott

Resin - Softball sizes vary. http://encarta.msn.com/media_701610572/Softball_Size.html

Oops. Decumbent and I cross-posted. You definitely don't want one of any size falling on you or your car!

This message was edited Apr 3, 2006 5:53 PM

Hi Resin! A softball is 28.5 to 30 centimeters round.....batter up! lol!.....Dave