By Dave Lindorff
My township of Upper Dublin, located about 12 miles north of Philadelphia, got clobbered by Hurricane Ida, but what’s strange about that is we’re located 1100 miles, as the crow (or a jet plane on a direct route) flies, from where Ida made landfall last Sunday.
While hurricanes, even a powerful Cat 4 storm like Ida with 150 mph sustained winds as it reached the coast of Louisiana, weaken quickly once they leave a warm body of water, and become no more than heavy rain storms, Ida did something unusual: it maintained its cyclonic structure as a tropical storm as it moved northeasteward after its destructive hit on the Louisiana coast, spreading flooding and spawning tornados along the way. When it reached our area, three days later, it spawned seven of those tornados. One of the largest, an EF 3 with 150 mph winds went straight across the center of Upper Dublin, wreaking havoc on suburban homes not designed for such winds, and went on for a total of over 20 minutes cutting a quarter-mile swath through forests, commercial districts and tracts of homes into the next township of Horsham before finally petering out.
The damage has been mind-boggling to contemplate for people who haven’t lived in the southeastern or midwestern US, where tornados are common enough that homes for hundreds of years have been built with storm shelters. We like many in our community were forced to huddle for safety in the center of our house away from glass windows as the twister roared past our house missing it by less than a quarter of a mile. As the tornado passed at around 5:30 pm on Wednesday, the power went out, and remained out for us until Saturday afternoon. During that time we got by using flashlights, flushing toilets with buckets of water carried from a flooded stream a few hundred yards form the house, and drinking bottled water (we have a 120-foot-deep drilled well so without power to the pump there was no water available). Eventually, with the prospect of no electricity for a week according to reports from the power company, Entergy, we bought a low-end gas generator which produced enough power to keep our refrigerator running and power a few lights, so that was a slight improvement.
Driving around the neighborhood the next day was a challenge. Many roads were blocked off with police tape and orange cones as an army of power company trucks filled the roads and crews worked on downed wires and poles knocked down by large trees Meanwhile a second army of trucks belonging to tree experts armed with chainsaws worked at removing fallen trees on houses, garages, cars and lawns. The largest of the tornados took part of the roof off of a local elementary school, lifted most of the roof of the steel-framed ceiling of the new local high school’s swimming pool (depositing it a hundred yards away in a sports field)…
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collecgively run, six-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please to to: https://thiscantbehappening.net/cat-4-and-5-hurricanes-tornados-where-they-havent-been-and-rising-temps-ahead/