Since it seems to have fallen off the national, 6:30p news

[capri0mni]

...I thought you might like an update on the Tornadoes, just out of curiosity:

Turns out there were eight (8) tornadoes spawned by that one storm, the strongest of which touched down in Suffolk, and skipped along for about ten miles (10).

Damage estimates stand at about $26.5 Million.

No official word on the tornado's intensity; apparently, we have to wait back for data analysis sent to a tornado study center in Ohio [waves to alryssa and mcganndoc] (I just caught the tail-end of that news report), but local guesstimates are that it was an EF3, or possibly, even EF4 tornado (out of a scale of 0-5).

There were no (human) deaths (they tend not to report the deaths of cats and dogs -- though they did report on the survival of one wee doggy, who was stuck at home, at the time). The worst injuries seem to be broken bones. I bet, if we did have a death toll, the national evening news would still give us a bit of a mention... (sigh).

Clean-up has begun. Many are claiming they plan to rebuild. There is much survivor guilt. There is also much grattitude, and strangers pulling together.

Mother Nature is still pwning the local news, instead of which bar saw a knife fight in the parking lot, last night (sigh). She does have a way of making sure we keep things in perspective.

Comments

[alryssa.livejournal.com]

Wow.

I suspect the centre they're talking about is probably the one based in Wilmington, OH, which is about... an hour's drive from here, or it's based at OSU.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yeah... The biggest "wow" is the low number of casualties, in everybody's not-so humble opinion. We get lots of "tornado watches" around here. But rarely any actual warnings, and the Emeergency Broadcast region around here includes North Carolina. So it's a wonder that nobody fell into the "crying wolf" trap, and everyone actually took cover (or were just damned lucky).

[alryssa.livejournal.com]

The early warning system probably makes all the difference. We really don't get them around this particular area (we've had watches a lot, too, but no actual warnings - well, there was a false positive on a touchdown in Butler about a year or so ago, but it was never confirmed). I think it's a lot to do with the local topography; it's really not conducive to tornadic development. Cincinnati itself in particular is extremely hilly.