In article lM1Rf.12253$Uc2.8449@fed1read04, "Nexis"
wrote:
"Janet Bostwick" wrote in message
...
"Nexis" wrote in message
news:3wMQf.12140$Uc2.3973@fed1read04...
[snip]
The really cool part was all the thunder and lightning, which I've really
missed since leaving MN.

Holy Crow!!!! That stuff kept me lying awake in terror at night and you
miss it??? I always wondered how you were supposed to see or hear a
tornado coming in that ferocious weather.

Oh trust me, as someone who's been through tornadoes, there's no doubt you
can hear them coming. Sounds like a freight train bearing down on you!!

Interesting. We "don't get tornadoes" here in Oz, but when I was
living briefly in Brisbane some decades ago I thought I heard a train
bearing down on the house one arvo. Looked out the front door and saw
a wall of whirling debris coming down the street.

Bit of a shock that! But, taking my cue from cyclone [hurricane]
strategy, I retreated to the smallest room in the house [the loo, of
course] and waited. Things got a bit noisier and through the small
window I could see sheets of iron peeling off the roof of the house
next door -- so I assumed we were losing ours too. There was a rather
large "thump" and the sounds of glass breaking; and then the
non-tornado was past, cutting a narrow swathe of severe damage across
a number of suburbs.

As it turned out, we didn't suffer any serious structural damage to
our house. A small _Grevillea_ tree in the front yard was twisted off
its stump, which ended up looking like a three-foot long corkscrew;
and a pine tree on the boundary tried to come in through the bedroom
window, but that was about it as far as we were concerned.

Clearly not up to the standard you Yanks enjoy (or else our houses are
a damn sight better built but I'll be happy if I never experience
another like it. (Long back in cyclone territory now anyway.)

Cheers, Phred.

--
LID