Tornado Hits Chiff & Fipple International Headquarters

[Doug_Tipple]

Dale wrote on facebook that a tornado hit his neighborhood at 6 am this morning. The electrical wires were pulled from the house, but otherwise the house is OK. There are a lot of trees down, and Dale's nextdoor neighbor's cars were destroyed. Dale said that he was expecting to be without power at his home for up to two weeks because of the extent of the damage in the area. As I write this tornado sirens are going off in my neighborhood.

[crookedtune]

Whew! Terrible year for tornados! Raleigh got hit very hard about ten days ago, resulting in the deaths of three little boys.

Good luck, Doug. And Dale, out there in the darkness, the same.

[Nanohedron]

Thank you so much for giving us the word, Doug.

The Undisputed lives to be disputed another day.

[Redwolf]

Wow...I was just watching the news and thinking about Dale and the other Chiffsters who live in the storms' path. Hang in there, all!

Redwolf

[emmline]

The effect on me and my traveling group (mom and Jeff) is that our connecting flight from Salt Lake City to Baltimore is running 5 1/2 hours behind due to the necessary plane being delayed in Atlanta. Jeff will be mighty tired, and we'll get home about 4am EST, but I can't complain, in view of the conditions others are dealing with.

[mutepointe]

Please be careful everyone.

[Thomaston]

I'm in Alabama with Dale. It's bad here, and still coming. Death toll at 57 so far. A good friend's parents lost their home today, but are safe. I'm working at the hospital, we've been pulling patients out of rooms with windows everytime a tornado warning is announced. Crazy night, indeed...

[s1m0n]

Good to hear that Dale (and all other fish & chipplers in the region) are OK. No doubt it's a hassle living without power, but there must be some solace in the fact that it could have been a whole lot worse.

[chas]

Thanks for the info. I was thinking of Dale and our other chiffsters when NPR had a story from Birmingham and Tuscaloosa this morning. It was scary.

Our own tornado warning expired 10 minutes ago. I find storms like this one odd. Last night a tornado touched down about 20 miles from my house. We got some rain, but nothing heavy, and not even much wind. One was spotted probably 10-15 miles away this morning. No rain and just a little wind where I was. Ten minutes after the warning's over and it's downright sunny out. Go figger.

[dwest]

When we got hit in '93 I was driving towards home and was six blocks away. It was windy but sunny, then in an instant it went dark and the air became green with leaves. The car in front of me slammed on his brakes as a sweetgum tree fell across the road. Within seconds it became sunny again, much too sunny as about fifty percent of the trees around us were gone. I just left my truck there and it took me a hour to walk to our home because of the downed trees and power lines. When I got there the front of the house looked fine except it was plastered with leaves but I could see none of the trees in the back yard that had been there since 1919. When I opened the front door I looked straight out the back of the house, which was gone. So was one of our cats, but she showed up later with a trophy. Our backyard neighbour's home had been bisected by one of our pines, their baby girl was asleep in the room on the top floor when the tree came through, she didn't even have a hair out of place. That was an F1 tornado not much by what's hitting the country right now, it destroyed 250 homes in our neighbourhood but no injuries, luckily the all kids were all at school and most folks at work.

[fearfaoin]

More tornado Watches today. Everyone,
find something solid to hang onto.

Yikes.

[Doug_Tipple]

Dale reported today that his daughter attending college at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa is OK, although the city is heavily damaged from a tornado that struck at 5:30 pm yesterday.

[Innocent Bystander]

Stay safe, everybody!