It has been a year of them for us folks in the southeast US, so many more and so many deaths (23 in North Carolina last week). The mid-west is accustomed to these things, but we are not. Two set down yesterday not 20 miles from my home. Where I live, they only damage structures in high places and in low valleys (more like dales here). Mobile homes and metal structures are always wasted. Uprooted trees actually do as much, if not more, damage to homes and vehicles than the tornadoes. And our rains are much more intense than a mid-western thunderstorm, because moisture is pulled in from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, so floods are always a threat too.
I had my water pump at the ready, but fortunes saw fit that not even a drop of rain fell over my residence last night, the nearest the rain came was 5 miles. That's the way it is with these things, folks in my area were untouched, drive 20 miles to the west and you see devastation.
Last week I went with the Red Cross to Rowland, North Carolina to help temporary repairs after the tree people had done their work. I would be doing the same tomorrow nearer to me in Axton and Brosville, Virginia, except trouble comes in bunches, and I have to take my youngest son to the hospital for one-day surgery kidney stone removal.
We Confederates have been bumped around the past two weeks. It seems fatality-wise, Georgia caught the brunt of it this time.
Thanks for thinking of us Sascha. Myself, I have been a fortunate son, but a lot of people throughout the southern US have been robbed of all of their belonging by a thieving wind. That's one reason I volunteer to help, because there but for fortune go I.
Caz