11:43 PM, Thursday night. Heavy weather.
I’ve been doing some moderate lumber-jacking. A junior Paul Bunyan am I. On Sunday we had some heavy weather here: high winds, hail, downed trees and such. Monday was spent sawing, chopping, and dragging. Then Tuesday rolled dimly around.
Actually things weren’t that bad at first.
By 5 o’clock or so, however, the light started getting weird and the skies flattened to a gunmetal gray...then darker still. After some premonitory rolls of thunder and a few blue-white snaps of lightning, two big storms poured though. In the end, fourteen tornadoes were reported to have touched down in and around Pittsburgh. They did a fair amount of damage, too. It’s sort of odd: not many people in this area (myself included) ever really thought about tornadoes. Even one here is fairly rare.
It’s easy to forget how powerful and unpredictable nature can be. Scary sometimes to be reminded...
--- JWR, 6/5/98
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