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[Fruit Pie Jones]

Just over a year ago, I posted a link to a video I shot of a hailstorm pounding my front yard. This year, the weather decided to do something a little different.

Since January, we've been building a house (well, mostly paying other people to build us a house) out in the country. It was nearing completion until last Tuesday (5/24). Now it's quite a bit less complete:


That's what a direct hit by an EF-4 tornado looks like. Fortunately, we hadn't moved in, or none of us would have survived. (Our current house is about 20 miles away and was untouched.)

Here are a few more shots of what's left. A pile of lumber, steel, and some of a tree:


2x4s facing roughly the same direction, helpfully indicating which way the tornado went:


Debris caught on a nearby cable fence:


And my favorite picture, a metal barrel that hit the fence with considerable force:


As I said, we hadn't moved in - we didn't even have any of our stuff there - and everything was insured, so we haven't really lost anything but time. Compared to what a lot of people lost on that day, we didn't do too badly.

We will be putting in an underground storm shelter.