Sun coming out to play today. It's supposed to be almost 70 tomorrow.Lavabe wrote:Frost this morning.


Moderator: CameronBornAndBred
Sun coming out to play today. It's supposed to be almost 70 tomorrow.Lavabe wrote:Frost this morning.
Yup. It came through Durham during the reunion parties too. Fortunately, instead of the usual tents, we were in a real building last night. Then, driving home after midnight, I got to drive through it again! Fun times. Doubly glad I was sober! Surprised, but glad!Devil in the Blue Dress wrote:Last night and early this morning, loud, violent storms came roaring through the western edge of the Piedmont. The sound of large hail crashing down awakened me twice after midnight. Heavy rains followed the hail. Lightening seemed to surround the house and all around it.
Glad that mess is past, but would prefer warmer temperatures than we now have..... 48 degrees near midday. We had spring for a day or two; now we're back to a bit of a winter like chill.
Glad you and Mom are fine. Thoughts and prayers to those who were not so fortunate, especially the family who lost 3 kids in the mobile home in Raleigh.CathyCA wrote:Yesterday was a day I won't soon forget.
I drove Christian to Raleigh yesterday to put him on his flight to California. He took off at 2:45, and the rain began only ten minutes later. Mom and I then drove to Crabtree Valley Mall. All along Glenwood Avenue, traffic lights were out and the police had not arrived to direct traffic yet, except at the Glenwood/Creedmoor intersection. I decided that it was safer to get off the road than to keep on driving, so I turned in to the mall.
Once we were inside the mall, we could hear the rain and the hail pelting the roof of the mall. It was eerie. The wind was blowing inside Belk's department store as the air pressure dropped precipitously. The electricity kept going on and off. Mom and I were on the second floor of the mall and didn't have time to take shelter on the ground floor. Instead, we ducked in to Ross-Simons jewelry store to get away from all of the glass that would go flying in the mall if the tornado touched down. Have you ever noticed how much glass is in a mall? The storefronts are almost entirely glass, the upstairs balcony walls are almost entirely glass, the roof is mostly skylights. If I'm going to get trapped in a mall, I might as well be trapped in a jewelry store. Those people were so nice, and they let us look at the weather radar on their computer. Meanwhile, tornadoes were touching down all around the city of Raleigh.
After the storm let up, Mom and I shopped some more, and then we decided to eat dinner at Brio while we were at the mall, in order to give the storms some time to continue moving east ahead of us. When we left the mall at 6:30 p.m., the sun was shining brightly. We stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up some teriyaki chicken, brown rice, orchids and THREE buck Chuck. About 2 miles from TJ's, I saw road signs and insulation and trees strewn over the Beltline (Interstate 440). I looked to the right and saw that the Ferguson plumbing supply house had been hit. The steel roof trusses were twisted, as was the metal siding of the building. Insulation was everywhere in the surrounding trees. Trees were snapped in half, road signs were twisted and blown across the Beltline, and the metal siding from Ferguson's was curled up and blown across the road.
Along U.S. 264 to Greenville, we saw uprooted trees, snapped trees, twisted road signs and insulation hanging in the trees. The storms were widespread. When we got to Pitt County around 7:45 p.m., we had caught up with the rain, and we came upon several traffic accidents, caused mostly by falling trees. Our electricity never went out (I haven't had to reset the alarm clocks), and there appears to be no damage to either Mom's house or my house. I'll go outside in a few minutes to look at the yard trash.
Others in our county and state weren't as fortunate as Mom and I were. Although today is supposed to be a day of celebration at church, our celebration will be tempered somewhat as we keep those poor people who were affected by the storm in our prayers.