Mother Nature is a b!tch!

Here's a few still pictures of the damage to our front yard. Still dont know if the house or roof had any bad damage. I was able to tell that some of the paint on our house got sandblasted off by the hail.

There is another flower pot with mini yellow roses under the tree a few feet away from the flower pot that's pictured.

The wind was blowing south. The tree is pointed at my neighbor's driveway just to the south of us. It's not blocking their driveway, so that's one good thing. They can still get out.

This flag was right in front of the tree. It's a little one you can get at a grocery store for about $2. It's fabric. The tree blew down, but that little flag stayed there, got ripped up a bit tho.

The wind just blasted the tree down. I think the wind twisted the tree. Because the side that's facing up, used to face the house. One of the reasons that it makes me think that we might have had a small tornado mixed in with the straight line winds.

The roots are still underground, and we're going to have to rip out our landscaping to get down to the root bed to get the roots out before we can replace the tree. (hope we can replace it)

My dad just called me to inform me that the power came back on. It flickered right after that, but it was still on when he called me, so YAY for OPPD! (OPPD = Omaha Public Power District)

Would someone tell Mother Nature to stop hitting us with tornadoes!?!?

Ok. First off, we're ok. I took my mom to a hotel so that she wont have to sit in an un-air conditioned house with no cable or internet.

My neighborhood, on the other hand, is a bit messy right now. (I have pictures)

We had a bit of a tornado/straight-line-100mph+-winds at around 5pm tonight. (friday). The last time I was this scared, or THIS CLOSE to a storm was in May of 1975 when we had a huge tornado hit town. The jury is still out on whether this was a tornado, but I saw the trees behind my backyard swirling and spinning. Plus, just the way some of the trees look, there could have been a bit of a twister in there.

I am so pissed off that Mother Nature killed my tree in the front yard! Why couldnt the stupid storm take the big ugly one in the backyard, and leave my nice shade tree alone?!? Stupid storm! We just got that tree all grown up to where we liked it. Now we'll have to start over. Wonder if the house insurance would cover putting a tree the same size back in there. Probably not.

My aunt that lives across the street doesnt look like she had much damage. All her lawn furniture that was in the back ended up in the front yard and her neighbor's yard.

My other aunt that lives downtown had a LOT of damage to the windows of her house and she lost a lot of the siding she had on the house. Stupid storm. That house looked good when my aunt got it sided a few years back. Now she'll have to start over. I dont know for sure, but she thought that it was just the windows that broken. There's a lot of glass in her house she said. At least her kittens, Fritz and Herman were ok.


I just tried to upload some of the video, but couldnt get it to upload, so I'll try again tomorrow if I can.

I'm going to go watch Stargate SG-1 on the hotel tv now, and maybe sleep.

Edited to add pictures.

Damnit! The world doesnt seem so funny any more.

George Carlin died today of heart failure. I think I'm really going to miss him.

I saw him in the mid-90's in Omaha at the Orpheum Theatre. First and only comedy concert that I've ever been to.

I nearly died of hypoxia (lack of oxygen) from laughing so hard. He was so funny.

Here's the video...hopefully...been having technical difficulties

Here are a few videos I took before the storm got really nasty and wet. I thought the clouds looked really ominous, but I am not sure if these were wall or funnel clouds, or if they're just a harmless shelf cloud. I thought they made for good video anyways.

This last video has the tornado sirens sounding. The noise is annoying, so you might want to turn your speakers down a little bit.

I think this storm, if those were actually wall/funnel clouds, might have been the storm that hit Bennington, NE. (Bennington is a town just north of Omaha...we're about 6 miles south of there)

I'm not seeing the video working, even tho I have the video boxes in there. Could someone post a comment saying whether or not the video works??

Tornadoes. Part II

Well, we had more tornadoes tonight. Multiple tornadoes.

This time it was more than just a mile or so of town that got hit. It was extremely widespread. I still dont know if Omaha had much damage, but a Boy Scout camp that's about an hour north from Omaha, just across the river into Iowa was hit. There were about 100 people there. The news is reporting that 40 or 50 people were injured, and that four people (pretty sure they were children) were killed.

Some of the injuries were minor, and a few were really bad. The news is saying that there were serious spinal injuries and head injuries for several people.

I cant remember any tornadoes in the past decade or two near the Omaha area actually causing deaths. This is probably the first tornado event that I can remember since 1975 where anyone was killed in one of the storms. On May 6th, 1975, Omaha had a bad tornado that ripped up the city and killed 3 people...that's the last storm that I can remember where there were any deaths in the immediate vicinity of Omaha.

I'm really getting tired of all these storms. It's been going on for the last two weeks. Almost every day or every other day we've been having thunderstorms. Now we've had two damaging tornadoes in the space of four days. (ok, the storm sunday was actually two tornadoes, todays storm was so widespread that they're probably going to report that it was multiple tornadoes tomorrow)

Lincoln, the capitol city of Nebraska actually had a tornado tonight. Some friends of mine that live there tell me that Lincoln hardly ever gets bad weather like that.

There's a lot of flooding going on in Omaha and other parts of Nebraska. Iowa is pretty much a large lake right now.

I did get a few video shots tonight of what I think (but am not sure) might have been a wall cloud. I'm recharging my camera battery right now, so I probably wont upload the video until later tonight or tomorrow.

I cant wait till these storms end. Normally I really enjoy this kind of weather, but not every day for a couple of weeks. Hopefully we'll have a quieter (and cooler) summer.

We're fine, in case anyone is wondering...

We had a tornado last night about 230am. I'm pretty sure the biggest damage was south of me, in a part of town called Millard (Millard is actually Omaha. Millard was a town of it's own until the Omaha-Borg assimilated it, I think when I was a small child....-Resistance is Futile!-)

The news is saying about 100 houses in the Millard area were damaged, a few of them beyond repair. Saw an interesting picture of some beams that were imbedded in people's front yards, and one picture of what looks like a 12 foot+ long beam that's impaled in the side of a house.

The Omaha police have closed down access into Millard to keep the sightseers (ghouls, looters, YouTube video wannabees) from wandering into the neighborhoods and hurting themselves.

The tornado touched down, ripped up Millard and then went back up and probably dropped down into other parts of Omaha (central and north) to make a mess before it wandered over into Iowa. There's apparently a lot of tree damage in various parts of town.

Other than the damage in Millard, the bigger worry now is flash flooding. They're saying we got 2 or 3 inches or more of rain last night, and we're expecting some more thunderstorms later today. So, a few people may be swimming out of their neighborhoods later tonight.

I need to rent this movie.

I'm a big fan of William Shatner, and also a big fan of William Shakespeare.