So I'm driving in the tornado...

Just wanted to share my, ah, interesting drive home from work yesterday.

This is Florida. ; South Florida to be specific. ; We have thunderstorms. ; Often. ; Driving in severe thunderstorms is really not a big deal for me, as I do it dozens of times a year, sometimes for weeks on end. ; I've got good rain vision, an AWD car, and can pretty much drive as well in wet as in dry. ; So when I mention that driving was a bit challenging yesterday...you can bank on it!

At around 5:30pm, I left work in Coral Springs FL, for my roughly 24 mile commute home to Boca Raton...my drive is pretty much ENE, though there's no direct diagonal route, so it's like stairs...North, East, North, East. ; Typically, it takes around 40 minutes in good weather, with typical rush hour traffic. ; When leaving my office, I noted the completely black sky to the west...very close...with a distinguishable funnel cloud and a ton of lightning. ; The funnel cloud was rotational with a small stem, but not extending downward in any way. ; No biggie - our severe thunderstorms often result in funnel clouds, but rarely in tornadoes.

I stopped off at a coworker's house to pick up a key - I'll be feeding her cat for her while she's gone next week, since her house is on my way home. ; She lives in Parkland...which much like the name implies is a very tree-covered neighborhood just to the north of Coral Springs. ; The storm caught up while I was at her house, with the rain coming down in barrels and winds picking up pretty heavily. ; Again...no biggie. ; This is normal late afternoon stuff for us in the summer. ; I lunged out to my car in the heavy rain and jumped inside...this rain was intense! ; And now the lightning seemed to be falling much more frequently and close...every 1 to 2 seconds was a bright strike to the ground, with the thunder following just about the time you were blinking the burned image off your retina. ; I drove down to the end of her street - about 100 yards - when the skies started lighting up with a crazy purplish blue flashing. ; Many of these flashes were blazing in between the lightning strikes - familiar with these from hurricane experience, I knew power transformers were arc-ing which meant lightning struck one or a line was impacted by a branch. ; No biggie. ; Well, actually, small biggie - her neighborhood has electric gates for entry/exit, and the power was now out - so they didn't open for me when I tried to leave. ; It was a small biggie, because my car was low enough and the gap big enough between the two gates that I could squeeze through them with my roofrails touching. ; Freedom!

Hitting the main road, I turned north to head out to my normal route home...realizing this was definitely some of the hardest rain I'd ever seen - I had trouble making out more than 10 feet of road in front of me, and the wipers were on high, flapping hard enough to look like they wanted the car to fly. ; The powerline flashes continued, now much closer as I noticed it was the poles lining the road I was on...several arc-ed out huge sparks just feet from my car as I drove past. ; I didn't drive far though, as I came upon a 70-foot Australian pine tree that had fallen across the road, taking the powerlines with it. ; Several of the now-disconnected lines were dancing in the street with sparklers at their tips...time to back up! ; Boy, were the winds really picking up now! ; My low-profile car was bouncing back and forth, and large tree branches nearly the size of my car were rolling across the road like twigs. ; Had to be running 60MPH or more. ; Turned around and driving south to the next cross street so I could head home, I was quickly blocked by another pine tree falling down across the road...but this one luckily took one bounce, then did a cartwheel and bounced right over the road to the other side. ; A few of the loosened power poles that were pulled by the tree threatened to come down on the road too - but they were kind enough to lift themselves out of the ground and fly horizontally across the road to the other side...leaving my path clear.

Hold on...back up a second. ; The tree CARTWHEELED?! ; The power poles lifted UP and FLEW?! ; Yes, I confirmed to myself...that is what I was seeing.

OK, so I'm driving in the tornado. ; (!!) ; Apparently, that friendly funnel cloud I noticed earlier had managed to huff and puff and turn itself into probably a minor EF1 tornado...or even the beginnings of one that just started to ruffle things up but didn't quite form all the way. ; I'd never quite had that before. ; With huge winds whipping across the road, I was quite happy to have a lower profile car designed for Autobahn speeds, rather than my old high profile SUVs I used to have. ; I made it out to the major road and proceeded east as quickly as I could make with that visibility (about 10MPH). ; Roads were now 3-4 inches of standing water, with branches and debris everywhere. ; At the main intersection (8-lanes by 6-lanes), the power was out, and though I really couldn't see much past my hood now, I did notice that hundreds of cars in commuter traffic were not moving at all - completely parked in their lanes with emergency lights on. ; What should have been challenging, crossing an 8-lane road at rush hour with no traffic signals, was actually quite easy...noone else was moving but me.

All the while, the winds were still running up in tropical-storm force or better. ; Big chunks of trees were all over the roads, as well as petrified drivers stopped in their places, reducing driving to a 5MPH slalom course. ; Lightning was striking the ground, prominently, every 1 to 2 seconds - I saw the top of a drug store, a tree, and a traffic signal pole all get struck within 100 feet of me. ; I was hoping to continue moving east, to get out of the way of this funnel cloud, which it seemed was moving more to the Northeast. ; This was somewhat unfortunate, as that is my direction home, and it was the direction this storm was travelling too. ; About this time, a cloying metal clanking noise...more of a pinging noise, started up. ; First it was infrequent, but then picked up into a cacaphony. ; Tink tink tink clang tink clang. ; Ah yes, our friend Hail! ; Hard to imagine the very concept of balls of ice falling out of the sky in the tropics in the summer when temps were running in the high 90s...but balls of ice they were, and falling they were. ; Fortunately, they were between pea-sized and dime-sized...small enough that sheetmetal damage was unlikely. ; But the last thing I needed in this apocalyptic hellfire-and-damnation storm was another weather extremity.

The easterly drive was accompanied the entire way by lightning strikes walloping the ground and everything on it, winds running comfortably in the 50MPH range, rain coming down at Niagara-falls rate, and the receding hail which fortunately only lasted about 5 minutes. ; Turning north, I reintersected the storm's intense heart...hoping the funnel cloud had pulled back its stem at least, and stopped trying to vaccuum up the landscape. ; The intensity picked up from 8 back to 9 again, and the debris fields started to show up as I entered my town of Boca Raton. ; The final 4 miles to my house was again a slalom course, with large branches, palm fronds, and a few toppled trees all littering the roadway, and a 6-lane thoroughfare of rush hour traffic was reduced to a 5MPH conga-line of single file cars weaving their way through all three lanes like rats in a maze, trying to find a way through the debris. ; Mother nature, not liking to play fair, was still rearranging the maze too - dropping new branches, and moving others with her huge winds. ; I was happy to at least notice power was on in my town - a step up on Parkland where I had left...that hopefully meant my house would still have power and AC. ; I managed at last to get to my neighborhood, swim through the guard gate (ours opened as it should, but was unfortunately situated over a 1-foot-deep lake, rather than a road). ; While I was happy for the low profile sports car when the winds were trying to pick everything up...I now wished I had my high-profile SUVs again as the waters lapped at my front bumper. ; Fortunately, no flooding engines, and my home's power was on, so my garage opener worked. ; I pulled in with the rain horizontally whipping into the garage - I had to close the garage door with the remote before getting out of my car, because of the amount of rain falling IN my garage!

All of my digital clocks were blinking, so power had been out at some point...a fair number of leaves and branches were littering the backyard. ; But otherwise, all was OK. ; The storm lasted maybe another 20 minutes before moving off into the ocean. ; My drive home had taken 1 hour, 20 minutes...about double normal time. ; I cursory look at my car this morning revealed no hail dents or issues...other than some palm frond leaves shoved in my lower air intake. ; The local news revealed Boca Raton had winds of 61MPH, 3 inches of rain in about 30 minutes, and 1,100 lightning strikes, including one that blasted a county sheriff off his feet at an intersection where he was attempting to tend to an accident that occurred during the storm (as of this morning, he's OK...in the hospital being monitored).

Just a little south Florida storm story to share with you all! ; The forecast for the rest of the week looks just like yesterday's forecast. ;

 

it is amazing that some of our normal afternoon thunderstorms turn into this!

We lost our oak tree several years ago in a "normal" thunderstorm. It was the biggest tree in the neighborhood. During the storm it sounded like a train was coming through our backyard, and a few minutes later our tree was laying across the neighbors roof.

Luckily, I have never been in a storm as bad as yours, except hurricane charley

 

uhhh yeah, me too. ; I've only been chased by a tornado. ; (it went east, then north on my way home from work - the theme park now known as Six Flags America)

And then we had another tornado a few weeks ago here, but we got the property damaging hail near the first day of spring. ; My car avoided it because I was driving home at the time, and I drove around the storm...

 

Gary,

Sounds like the news this morning on the sheriff's deputy is that the lightning likely hit near him, maybe one of the traffic signal poles at the intersection, and he may have gotten a secondary shock from an offshoot of the main strike, or from the current carrying through the rain/water. ; They think he'll be fine, but kept him in the hospital to monitor just to make sure. ; Another deputy on scene had heard the strike, then saw his fellow officer lying on the ground...he was conscious but a bit disoriented and breathing a little erratically.

I've heard some of the long term effects from people who survived direct strikes - some of the long term symptoms can range from painful to downright strange (like a metallic taste to all food they eat).

Craig,

You said it - you know how just a little spot on the radar can turn into something that seems like the world is ending, then 10 minutes later it's as if nothing ever happened and the sun's out again. ; When you don't even hear about it on the news, you wonder how anyone could have missed it! ; (actually, the mention of 60+MPH winds, hail, and the lightning strike officer all made the news...but not the power lines and trees down in Parkland in a possible tornado). ; That was Parkland's 2nd suspected tornado in 5 days. ; My friend didn't get her power back on until 11pm that night (it happened around 6pm).

Roger,

I know more than I could ever want to know about your Texas hail...and ours doesn't come close. ; I got hit by that stuff driving to a friend's wedding in Dallas in '96...my windshield was cracked and 3 nice dents in my hood and roof at the Louisiana/Texas border, before I ducked under an overpass. ; By the time I pulled into Dallas later that day, it looked like a warzone - softball-sized hail had ripped holes through car sheetmetal and busted clean through the roofs of houses, trees had no branches left, and the river was running right up to the bottom of the bridges. ; My friend's now-wife's car was totalled - hail punched 3 holes in the hood that busted the engine up and 1 through the roof that left a gaping hole to the interior, which promptly filled with water. ; I was very happy to have just caught the edge of the storm at the border, and my cracked windshield and dents which were going to be my big story pretty much went by the wayside!

I like our Florida hail much better. ;

 

I know...pretty nutty stuff!

Today was clear so far. ; I hear distant thunder now as I type this, as some evening storms are passing to the south...but just the normal hot, humid night stuff that pops up every so often.

 

that must have been fairly cool. ; and i am sure that you were wishing you had your camera with you.

 

Grand irony...I did have a camera with me! ; Though even if I had been able to release one hand from the wheel and concentrate on anything other than avoiding cars and branches and lightning...I don't think the camera would have seen much of anything. ; The rain was so heavy, it was basically a grey-out. ; Visibility was 5-10 feet at best. ; In hindsight, I should have snapped that funnel cloud on the way out to my car right before it hit...but at that time, it just seemed like another typical afternoon boomer, and nothing I would pay any special attention to!

 

BTW...I do like taking weather photos around the house or neighborhood when these storms well up. ; Here's a few random rain, cloud, or weather photos around here:

Backyard rain, ant-eye view:


Bouncing off the awning:


Kerplow! ; In the backyard:


Storm coming over the house:


Rainy commute home:


Driving towards the storm:



I've got lots more...but none uploaded. ; When these storms come, you often don't have much else to do. ; We tend not to gab on phones during electrical storms (unless they're cordless), don't want to turn on computers and nice TVs...so you pretty much just step outside for a look or watch out the window. ; Grabbing a camera and snapping some shots is a good time killer!

 

I love lightning shots! ; But I like all of these too!