Thursday, February 12, 2009

The February 11, 2009 Windstorm - MY Point of View!

Dear God, it was HELL on earth this afternoon around 5:30pm!

I headed toward downtown Cincinnati shortly after round one of two rounds of thunderstorms passed through the Florence area. Along the way, it was still very wet, raining, and just plain nasty. I made it to Cincinnati about 5:10pm and headed into TJ Maxx to buy myself a shirt to wear.

Well, I came out of TJ Maxx about 10 minutes later, and was rolling along 4th Street when the sirens started blaring. All over downtown, you could hear those suckers...I didn't see what the big deal was, I thought the storms were east or north of downtown, but just to be sure, I called Channel 12 (did not have a radio handy). As it turned out, a storm was coming straight out of Boone and Kenton Counties. And, it was headed right for downtown.

I ran quickly down to 2nd street, then over to the Taylor-Southgate Bridge, thinking I could outrun it. I did not realize, however, that storm motion was 70 MPH to the northeast! Big miscalculation.

I was on the bridge when that sucker hit. All at once, it was heavy rain, winds to 60 or 65 miles per hour that nearly sent me into the wall of the bridge's pedestrian sidewalk, and pea size hail. And then 4-5 minutes later, it was over. Just like that. I couldn't believe it.

I later (around 8:30pm) ran headlong into winds of about the same force, but dry wind this time as opposed to winds carrying hail and very heavy rain. And it was the same thing...I blew around more than the leaves on the trees!

2 comments:

Michelle said...

That would scare the hell out of me to put it bluntly! Glad your Okay.

J. Moses said...

Well, here's what this 23 year old quickly learned about fast-moving severe thunderstorms on Wednesday.

When you are moving at 4 miles per hour one direction, and a thunderstorm is coming AT you from that same direction at 70 miles per hour...the thunderstorm will win the race every time. Furthermore when that same thunderstorm is packing 55-60 mile an hour winds, you will NOT move very far, very fast unless your back is to the wind! Put it this way, I was glad I did not blow away! When I got across the bridge and up to Newport on the Levee (a northern Kentucky tourist attraction), my friend Emily took one look and said only two words..."You're soaked!"