Tornado in Raleigh, and other NC cities

[Zero]

I just saw pictures of damage in Raleigh. Seems like several tornadoes hit the city.

Any posters in that area, everyone OK?

http://www.wral.com/weather/image_gallery/9452442/

Wow, it hit two very large stores during peak shopping day, a Lowes and a BigLots.

 

[FUEGO]

Not there right now but I have ties to the area. I haven't heard any reports of deaths yet, but lots of property damage and power outages. A tornado apparently went through downtown Raleigh and heavily populated residential areas. The lowes store was destroyed by a separate tornado maybe 30 miles to the south.

Reports from family indicate the tornado missed them by probably 500', with most trees down at that distance, but their house is perfectly fine.

I'll probably drive around tomorrow and check out the widespread destruction.

 

[F-One]

Report of one death in county east of Raleigh. Some houses and business damaged in Raleigh. Lowes Hardware in Sanford pretty much destroyed, no injuries initially reported. That tornado moved through Raleigh and north, news said total distance, not all on ground was about 96 miles.

Link of local damage from local TV

Viewer photos: April 16, 2011, storm damage :: WRAL.com

 

[Zero]

If everyone got out of that Lowe's without injury that will be amazing luck.

 

[FUEGO]

Wow, this ended up being pretty bad. Three confirmed dead not far from our house (maybe 1/2-3/4 mile). Between us and DW's siblings and parents, we have 4 houses in the worst affected part of Raleigh. The center of the path of the tornado threaded the needle, coming within 1/2 to 3/4 mile of all of our houses. The edge of the tornado was certainly a lot closer than that, probably impacting our properties. We are out of town luckily, but other family still in town checked on the house and said there was no significant damage (based on a drive by). Everyone seems to be safe in the family with no real damage.

In and around our neighborhood everyone is without power. 12000 households (basically everyone in this zip code). It will be interesting going back home tomorrow and seeing the damage.

 

[grumpy]

We are in Durham, N.C. visiting our new grand baby. That is about 25 miles from where the worst damage was. What we experienced was a violent thunderstorm with heavy rain and high winds. The thunder had the grand dogs hiding under a desk. We did see some tree limbs down when we took the dogs for a walk after the storm but that was about it. The weather following the storm was beautiful. After we swept all of the debris off the deck, we had dinner outside.

During the storm my son texted his friend who lives in the hardest hit area to see if they were OK. He texted back: "no tornado but we did see Dorothy flying by".

 

[sheehs1]

Spent most of last evening watching the news...as we were in the path of these systems with the tornado warnings in southeastern Virginia. At one point a tornado was 3 miles from us. We had been without cable and internet for about 3 hours in the late afternoon which made me nervous as I couldn't tell what was happening so my sister called me updating us until the services came back online about 5:00 or so. We thought our son was in Raleigh. Luckily he did not go. Winds around 74 mph in our area. We were lucky as the tornados skirted around us.
Thinking of those affected by this "humbling" storm system.