"Giles" wrote in message
...
On Dec 30, 8:41 pm, Frank Reid © 2008 wrote:
Okay, you know there had to be a Frank story (though, your's were
pretty good, but not up to my professional standing).
There I was at Lowry AFB in Denver back in 19mmumblemumble...

That's not fair! You got missing body parts and dead people and
flying debris and broken bones and possessed lawn machinery
and.....and......and all I got is a lousy waterspout.

giles
it ain't fair.


Hi Giles,
He's got good stories (Hi Frank).

Here's mine.
One Christmas break I took the kids to a caravan park on the banks of a
favourite river I fish (Alexander on the Goulburn River in Victoria.) We had
a ball for the first 3 days, sunny, hot and cool nights... 5min fishing,
throwing rocks, exploring, swimming in the river, lilo (one man blow up
mattresses) races, etc. On the 4th day just after lunch we were getting
ready to go for another swim when it started to cloud over a bit with a few
drops of rain. Kids were putting the towels back and were going to wait for
it to pass. I convinced them to try swimming in the rain - it was still hot
and we were going to get wet anyway ( You could see them working thru the
logic.). We get to the river 60' away when the rain drops were getting
bigger and bigger causing the kids some concern, so I jumped in first. As I
surfaced, the tempest hit.

The kids were back in the cabin by the time I got to the bank. After
reassuring the kids we sat on the veranda watching the storm. 30 sec later
it hit full force. It lasted 5 min maybe, in this time we watched clumps of
branches fly by horizontally (never seen that before), trees with 8'' trunks
being uprooted in front of us, a stand of Weeping Willows across the river
being stripped of about 1/3 of their leaves and 14" diameter branches ripped
off, the cabin being peppered with branch clumps and then shaking and
visibility dropping to about 50'.

Then calm, apart from the stifling humidity, you'd think nothing had
happened.

Had a walk around the caravan park to see if anyone needed help, and mate!
6' diameter trees were uprooted! Cars crushed, caravans rolled and crushed
and the only injury was a small cut on a lady's arm. This Cyclone cut a path
about 700' wide and maybe 80 miles long, falling trees knocked out the water
pump, power lines, toilet block, the common room and the septic pump at the
caravan park so we went home seeing it's path cross the road 40 miles away.
The park was closed for one month, losing about 25 trees (100') and the
other half had to be trimmed to make them safe. The severity of the storm
sunk in when we saw a 8' wide tree blown over.

The kids still check the sky before they swim in the river.

Rob.

Ps. This rarely happens here, common up in the top end of Australia and we
call them Cyclones, but not as common as your Tornados.

Pss. Frank, I told the kids about your incident with the snow blower... my
son wants to know if we can get one too!