Anthony mentioned it earlier on a distribution list - i'm sure he won't mind me pasting his text here.
Quote:
Last night (Tuesday) I think we had a near miss with a tornado...
At about 9.30pm the wind changed from a strong westerly to a strong
easterly, caught us by surprise and blew a few things around on our back
verandah which is normally protected from the westerly winds. I went
out to clean up and noticed the strong easterly wind, didn't know what
to make of it as the prevailing wind all day had been from the west, and
the clouds were moving rapidly from west to east...
Anyhow, as I cleaned up I could hear a lot of wind noise not far away,
maybe 100m uphill (west) from us. The noise grew louder and louder until
it was just a loud roar. I couldn't see very much since it was dark but
it sounded ferocious. After a few seconds I realised that it wasn't just
another windstorm coming across because it seemed to be moving much too
slowly for that. I called out to Leisa and she came out and had a listen
and then said we should just get inside.... a good plan. The winds
reached us just as I went inside and closed the sliding door, but I
could feel the door shaking and vibrating as the storm went past.
A few seconds later the power went off for a few seconds, came back on
briefly and then went off again. It stayed off for a while after that,
not sure how long but maybe an hour or so.
I half-jokingly said to Leisa that we'd just had a near miss from a
tornado, that's exactly what I'd imagine such an event would sound and
feel like.
We checked her laptop computer which was still running on battery and
showing the radar images from before the power went off - it showed a
large red spot surrounded by orange and yellow in among the other storms
that were coming across. The red spot had just reached us. I've seen
these "supercell" red spots before in previous years, they're almost
always exceptionally violent storms.
After the winds calmed down I went for a drive around some of the local
area to see if anyone had lost a roof or anything, it all looked ok as
far as I could see in the dark, no-one was running around with torches
or anything.
And so .. when we woke up this morning and looked out toward the road
(merryville drive) we saw a blue trampoline, somewhat broken, had
appeared in our front yard overnight. There is no fence damage so I can
only imagine that it landed there after being airborne for some
distance. I have no idea where it came from, but I suspect it dropped
in from some ways off... perhaps someone in Kansas is missing one? I've
checked under it for dead witches, none found.
http://www.acquerra.com.au/trampoline.jpg
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Amazing!