Tornado in Paradise. Father's Day

 

Tornado at 1:10 am Father's Day (today)

June 18, 2023

"Last night as I lay on my pillow, 

  Last night as I lay on my bed, 

Last night as I lay on my pillow,

  I dreamt that my Bonnie was dead."  

I was still awake at 1:00 am, for no particular reason, and heard thunder.  Lots of thunder.  I was surprised when I looked out the window at the amount of lightning.  I've never seen such spectacular lightning.  It was non stop, so that the sky stayed lit up for about half an hour without pauses between flashes.  Strange.  

The weather service was calling again, but I ignored them.  I knew what they would say.  "There is a thunderstorm at 1:00 am.  This is the weather service."  OK.  

As I watched the amazing lightning, it occurred to me that I had heard that such lightning accompanies tornadoes.  Nah.  If I had looked more carefully I would have seen the tornado, which was about half a mile away.  Lightning so lit the sky that everything was visible outside.  It looked like a bolt of lightning a second for around half an hour.  

I heard hail again, and decided to close my eyes and go to sleep.  I began to pray.   Then I woke up to a sunny day.  

This morning I noticed a whole lot of leaves and branches all over the yard.  Other than that things were OK.  I have heard that no one was killed or injured, but a lot of buildings were damaged.  The airport is near here, and was damaged.  

That was last night in Paradise.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Qu6uarPD4

UPDATE

I read a report about this tornado.  It turned out to be a category EF2.  That's a more severe tornado than I realized.  

I drove around a few places and didn't see a lot of damage, although I have heard a lot of buildings were damaged.  My kitty was killed, and a lot of chickens.  And other animals.  I stopped at the post office and was surprised to see that the American flag was dangling from the top of the flag post, the rope that held it having broken.  It seems like they would have repaired that by now.  It must have been seriously whipped around in the tornado.  I wasn't really looking for damage.  I have been worried about a couple of buildings of mine, but they were OK.  

I've been hearing that El Niño is behind this and that there may be more storms than usual this year.