I don’t know how to break this to you, but I’m gonna talk about the tornado again.
The reason? I have new information, and it’s a pretty big deal. The National Weather Service office in Little Rock has updated its preliminary findings on a pair of EF3 tornadoes that struck north-central Arkansas during the pre-dawn hours Sunday.
There were no significant changes to the NWS assessment of the storm that touched down in Boone County and lifted 22 miles later near Summit, six miles northwest of us. That, we figured, was the one that came closest to The Mountain.
The second twister, however, thought to have begun in Baxter County, was much larger and more serious than indicated in the previous report. Here’s the original graphic showing that storm’s track and vital statistics:
Now notice the differences between Monday’s initial report and what NWS Little Rock released late last night:
Ongoing damage surveys revealed that this tornado was on the ground for almost an hour and traveled nearly 30 miles farther than preliminary estimates suggested. It wasn’t confined to Baxter County, either — it began here in Marion County and didn’t lift ’til it entered Fulton County.
Peak winds were unchanged at 140mph. First estimated to have been 1,000 yards wide, that metric was revised to one mile.
But this new report got a whole lot more personal (for us) than that stack of numbers.
The second tornado touched down a mere 4.6 miles WSW of us. And it was on the ground six minutes before the Boone-Marion tornado lifted. It raked along the west end of our subdivision road, just over the ridge of Hall Mountain, and the center of rotation passed within 1,000 to 1,500 yards of our Home.
For several minutes, The Mountain was being rocked by winds from two rotating storms, each within a few miles of the other. That freak meteorological phenomenon explains what we experienced, corroborated by neighbors’ accounts — fierce winds from one direction, interrupted briefly by an eerie stillness, followed by a second onslaught from the opposite direction.
I’ve been through one hurricane in my life (Gloria, 1985). That’s what it felt like.
We’re even more fortunate than we thought. Folks ’round here call that “blessed.”
Today, we got an all-day soaking rain. We were looking at a slight chance of thunderstorms, but (as one forecast team put it) there also was “significant bust potential.”
I smiled when I read that. I’m a guy, after all. Significant bust potential.
I busied myself in the cabin this morning, staging materials for installing the woodstove and taking measurements. I assembled scaffolding and unboxed a pair of fans that’ll help make it tolerable to work in there this summer.
And I swept the floor.
With severe weather behind us for the time being, I put our flags back up. I inverted the flag of the United States of America.
According to the United States Flag Code, § 8 (a):
“The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.”
Many of my like-minded friends have done the same today. And frankly, it’s overdue.
If you don’t think that America and its People are in “dire distress” and “extreme danger,” you’re an ignorant fool.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB