"The saddest thing was the crying of the horses", my 82 year old Sanford neighbor told me about the damage you didn't hear on the news about the North Carolina tornadoes. The horse farm between Sanford and Fuquay Varina on NC42 was leveled. I had stopped on NC42 for the road clean up by workers with chain saws and bulldozers but I didn't see the missing house and barn.
It's hard to see something that's gone.
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Lee Ave., Sanford NC, Static Control Corp. warehouse hit by 160mph plus winds.
photo: Raleigh NWS
THE TORNADO THEN ENTERED AN INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX ALONG INDUSTRIAL DR WHERE IT MULTIPLE STEEL CONSTRUCTED RETAIL BUILDINGS WERE DESTROYED IN ADDITION TO AT LEAST THREE LARGE WAREHOUSES AT THE STATIC CONTROL FACILITY. WINDS IN THIS AREA LIKELY EXCEEDED 160 MPH. THE TORNADO THEN DESTROYED THE TRACTOR SUPPLY COMPANY... BIG LOTS... AND LOWES HOME IMPROVEMENT STORE ALONG HIGHWAY 421. WINDS IN THIS AREA WERE ESTIMATED AROUND 140 MPH. TWO HOMES WERE BLOWN OFF THEIR FOUNDATIONS ALONG RICE RD NORTH OF HIGHWAY 42. A FATALITY OCCURRED ALONG POPLAR SPRING CHURCH ROAD IN A MOBILE HOME.
Somehow the homeowners survived by hiding in the safest spot in the house, but the barn was destroyed and the horses were picked up by the tornado and scattered. The owners of the farm could hear the horses crying but they couldn't find them as afternoon turned to night.
The official reports on severe weather and climate change never mention the suffering of the animals. They don't tell about the horses with broken legs wailing in pain in the night after an unprecedented tornado outbreak. They say:
A FATALITY OCCURRED ALONG POPLAR SPRING CHURCH ROAD IN A MOBILE HOME.
It could have been someone I canvassed when I campaigned for President Obama. I don't know.
The National Weather reports that North Carolina was hit by 26 tornadoes.
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In her 82 years, my neighbor told me she has never seen weather like this. She said that the next day (the day I was talking to her) the veterinarian was finally able to get to the horse farm, the horses were found, and put out of their misery.
The storm responsible will trek eastwards today, bringing the threat of severe weather to regions of the Southeast hard-hit by last week's remarkable tornado outbreak. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has placed a wide swath of the country from Eastern Texas to New Jersey under their "slight risk" for severe weather. According to the latest tornado tallies on the excellent Wikipedia page on the April 14 - 16 tornado outbreak, 128 tornadoes are confirmed to have occurred, with 39 of these strong EF-2 and EF-3 twisters. Remarkably, there have been no violent EF-4 or EF-5 tornadoes reported yet in 2011, despite the fact that the preliminary 2011 tornado count as compiled by SPC is 611, which will likely make 2011 the most active tornado season on record for this point in the year.
