We all recognize this line from The Wizard of Oz, after Dorothy gets blown away by the tornado into the wonderful world of Oz. Well after a similarly disastrous storm here in Dallas on Tuesday, I know I'm sure as hell not in England anymore.
Dallas, it seems, is slap-bang in the middle of tornado country, and right now, it’s twister season! Until this point, I’ve had many, many, Dallasites tell me just how crazy the weather gets here but when they spoke of hail stones the size of golf balls, and tornadoes blowing through the city, I thought these were perhaps occurrences that had happened in Dallas’ history, but not actually a regular annual thing. You know, like when the weather man tells us we're going to have an Indian summer in England – we laugh because we know it’s not true! Well that was my attitude towards storms and hail and tornadoes; I’m sure they could happen but it doesn’t mean they will.
Well Dallas, I’m very sorry for doubting you.
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| This should be an ad for safety glass - look at the size of those hail stone holes, and his windscreen didn't even shatter! |
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| Yes, that is a lorry in the air there |
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| I think one of these, aimed correctly, could kill you |
It was strange as between 1 and 2pm, I'd been sitting outside eating lunch on a patio at a restaurant, and it was a little rainy, but we were oblivious! I heard a few sirens (imagine air raid/blitz type noises) but I'd heard them before, and dismissed it. Then we got back to the office and I see I've got texts from people in Albuquerque saying they'd seen the news and was I OK; everyone at work was standing at the windows looking out and talking about the tornadoes that had already hit certain areas, and I'd just been eating lunch on a patio! That's how sudden these things happen.It was madness. By 2.30pm, the sky was so dark it looked like night. My office is on the 7th floor, and as Dallas is so flat, you can normally see for miles, but the clouds had closed in so much we could barely see further than a block.
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| As the storm came in |
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| Moments later, and the buildings have disappeared under the fog |
The roads were flooded, it looked pretty apocalyptic out there, and for a while we thought we might be stuck at the office after hours (noooooo!) And then it was gone. Skies cleared up, no more rain, no more hail; the tornadoes blew away to bother other people (sorry about that guys) and life went on.
There are some really sad pictures of people's houses that have been destroyed. What's crazy is the aerial footage of the neighbourhoods that were hit shows some houses which have been destroyed and levelled to the ground, and the house next door is fully intact; perhaps the lawn ornaments have blown over, but they look pretty much untouched.
Today, apart from the pictures and tweets that are all over the internet, you would not know there had been a crazy storm yesterday. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the birds are singing in the few remaining trees... The area in the picture above, the dark one where the storm clouds were gathering, that's where I live. Today it looks like this:
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| It's like nothing happened |
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