 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: BobD
Date: 2012-03-16 11:18
Wondering how our friends in the Dexter/Ann Arbor areas are......
Bob Draznik
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Author: dperreno
Date: 2012-03-16 11:25
It seems the storm tracked East and South. I live just north of Detroit (Beverly Hills), and it missed me.
Doug
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2012-03-16 11:31
Not far from me, either. No deaths, no major injuries, property can be replaced.
We're used to the alarms (2 or 3 times a year) but not so early in the year!
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Author: Mom
Date: 2012-03-16 16:55
Is this typical for the area? I thought the tornadoes there were generally small and tend to fizzle out quickly. Can't believe how those homes were just flattened in Dexter.
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Author: dperreno
Date: 2012-03-16 17:08
Not typical at this time of year. Normally July and August are the tornado months. As to the size and amount of damage, nothing unusual there, it seems. They were powerful, but relatively small. These weren't 200 feet across like the ones that hit Kentucky and Indiana a few weeks ago.
Doug
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Author: JJAlbrecht
Date: 2012-03-16 19:47
The Detroit area got a lot of tornados just a few years agoo, too. Pretty serious.
It happens all over the Midwest. It can happen any time we get thundersorms. We had a pocket of warm, wet air, followed by a fast-moving coldd front. Thunderstorms and tornados are common with that type of weather.
Doug, I see you are a Beverly Hillbilly, too! Been here since 1988, myself.
Jeff
“Everyone discovers their own way of destroying themselves, and some people choose the clarinet.” Kalman Opperman, 1919-2010
"A drummer is a musician's best friend."
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2012-03-16 20:11
Mom wrote:
> I thought the tornadoes there
> were generally small and tend to fizzle out quickly.
They are and do ... but only compared to the giant ones that affect those far south of us. A little 50' wide twister going a half mile on the ground can ruin your day ... a quarter mile wide one running 10 miles ruins everyone's day.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2012-03-16 22:48
There was a bad one in '53. I was in Mass. at the time and it hit
Worcester. That was in May.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Mom
Date: 2012-03-17 01:53
Thank you for the weather lesson. I will crawl back into my hole now and add tornadoes to my worry list. I like that at least you get alarms with tornadoes! Maybe one day we'll get that for earthquakes.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2012-03-17 02:08
Mom wrote:
> Thank you for the weather lesson. I will crawl back into my
> hole now and add tornadoes to my worry list. I like that at
> least you get alarms with tornadoes! Maybe one day we'll get
> that for earthquakes.
:)
We get earthquakes out here, but tiny ones and very infrequently. But some of the largest have happened relatively close to here and made the mighty Mississippi flow backwards. Look up the 1812 New Madrid earthquakes. And we're overdue :D
There's no safe place, only lucky places for lucky people.
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Author: dperreno
Date: 2012-03-17 15:08
Yes Jeff, we Hillbillies have to stick together! I was the one who lent your daughter her Eb clarinet in High School (which your wife subseqently bought for a graduation gift). I hope she is enjoying it! I just succumbed to my feelings of loss and bought myself a new (old) Noblet Eb from Australia. Now I have to find an occasion to play it!
Doug
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Author: JJAlbrecht
Date: 2012-03-17 23:51
Doug, she's doing very well at Western. Has her Junior Recital in a few weeks. I am looking forward to the recital!
Jeff
“Everyone discovers their own way of destroying themselves, and some people choose the clarinet.” Kalman Opperman, 1919-2010
"A drummer is a musician's best friend."
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2012-03-23 00:51
Report from Ground Zero + 4
I live in Ann Arbor, 10 miles east of Dexter, am an amateur radio operator (ham), and also a Skywarn spotter in Washtenaw county. Our EOC is staffed with mostly ham licensees, a big advantage. The Emergency Operations Manager, also a ham, has done a great job fostering involvement in the amateur radio community. Our 2-meter band Skywarn radio repeater has very good county-wide coverage.
For this event, we were fortunate to have people able to be deployed into areas where the weather did not look good. We have to salute their bravery and fortitude. Forget the chasers on TV - this is not what we do in Michigan where tornadoes tend to be wrapped up in rain. Going into the thick of it here has a big risk.
On my way to a quintet gig, on my mobile radio, I heard a ham confirm the wall cloud (this is where tornadoes come from.) My involvement ended when I arrived at a Dexter Chamber of Commerce event - with a sprained ankle I hadn't been able to get into my house to retrieve my walkie-talkie. Still, I was aware there were hams out there in spots that were not safe. Their willingness to do this gave a lot of people enough warning so that there were no serious injuries, which is just amazing.
From the Ann Arbor Country Club, 4 miles due east of downtown Dexter, I saw a shelf cloud that should have been moving my way in a few minutes, but took an hour. We had a little 1/2" hail, a fair amount of rain, and an hour of continuous thunder. Reports from ground zero in Dexter Village were of a tornado that didn't ever want to leave.
Tornado strength is rated now on the "Enhanced Fujita" scale, from 0 to 5, by surveying damage after-the-fact. So, during its NW to SE 7.2-mile track, the Dexter tornado went from EF1 to EF2 to EF3, then back down to EF1, back up to EF2 and EF3, back down to EF1, and dissipated. The tornado paralleled Dexter-Pinckney road to its west, crossed eastward just north of Dexter, then paralleled Dexter-Ann Road to its east, dissipating around Zeeb Rd. About 200 homes were damaged, and about 20 will need to be demolished. There is a Chevy dealership just south of downtown. I would characterize the subdivision behind it as a sea of blue tarps. Trees just south of the dealership are full of home insulation.
Dexter High School was being used as a relief staging area. Ann Arbor Public Schools and Pioneer High School orchestra director Jonathan Glawe were so gracious as to allow us to hold the Dexter Community Orchestra's Friday dress rehearsal at PHS. Saline Schools were equally gracious to open Saline Middle School (15 miles SSE) for our Sunday concert. We were not charged rental for either of these facilities.
We put out our usual donation buckets, told everyone half the proceeds would be donated to disaster relief, and were able to present the fund with a check for over $1,000. Detroit channel 4 WDIV TV used our concert as a sign of life returning to normal (yep, that was me playing Ravel on the 11PM news.) The relief fund will be used to help people with no insurance, help those do who have insurance pay their deductables, and help with tree removal not covered by many policies (one of our Skywarn folks lost 12 mature white pines 70' tall.)
The community response has been tremendous, but there are definitely a lot of people who have been traumatized. A psychologist friend spent a lot of time talking to people in the damage area, and it was tough work. One family moved into their home on Sunday only to have the tornado do $20K of damage to it 4 days later. It is not unrealistic to expect a certain number of people will move out of the area.
On Easter Sunday 1988 a funnel cloud went directly over our house. We were fine but there was tornado damage 1/4 mile SE and 1/4 mile NW of us. This experience told us that while lots of people want to see tornadoes, this is not the way to do it.
Post Edited (2012-03-23 01:02)
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Author: BobD
Date: 2012-03-23 12:40
Thanks Ralph....and glad you're safe........
Bob Draznik
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