Tornado

Much to our surprise, the temperature rose to 80 degrees on Friday.

Even more surprising, an incoming cold front spawned a tornado down at Davis Creek.

Davis Creek is at the southernmost end of the county,

in a little neck of the woods called Bavon.

Those who attended Blog Fest a couple years back will remember this as the place where we caught the boat to tour the lighthouse and surrounding area.
(Click here for a few pictures of us standing around before boarding the boat.
I know I have photos of the building, just not readily available.)

Thankfully, nobody was injured. 

After ravaging this adorable structure, the tornado plowed through the yard below, taking down a power line and damaging nearby homes and sheds.

Just to the right of all this, everything appears untouched.
But if you click on the image (below),

you can see some of the roof was torn off that structure.

And yet, in the middle of all this insanity chaos, there is a message of hope.

This and the boat in the first photo are one and the same.
The irony in the name is priceless.

For once, there is a lot for me to report--over and above the tornado, which is noteworthy enough. Click here for more news coverage about that.

First, the eighty degree weather inspired quite the photo tour for me on Friday.

Saturday I raced out to capture the damage from the tornado.  Again, we are grateful nobody was injured and thankful that it wasn't worse.

Before the tornado, however, Chesapeake Bay Daughter (a tornado herself on the basketball court) went on to win her final game, which meant her team was undefeated for the season.  That last game was absolutely brutal and deserves its own blog post.  In the meantime, this morning at 7:35 a.m. she, another teammate and her coach will be featured on our local radio station 99.1 WXGM. I will be listening from my office in Williamsburg an hour away. My parents are taking her to the station.

There's so much more to report about last Friday, but we have all week to talk about that.

Here's to a great Monday and an even better week, hopefully free of tornadoes and chaos.

-CBW

Concert

Today's mercifully brief post has two completely unrelated purposes.

First, I want to share a few more photos from Sunday's excursion to Aaron's Beach.

And, unrelated to the pictures, I want to help convey a public service announcement.

On my ride home from a soccer game last night (the JV boys lost to West Point), I received one of those automated phone calls from the school announcing a band concert tonight at 7 in the high school auditorium.  Students from Thomas Hunter Middle School and Mathews High school will perform for approximately an hour and a half.  Proceeds will be donated to the music department at Page Middle School in Gloucester, which lost most (if not all) of its instruments and equipment in the recent devastating tornado.

Tickets are $5 per person or $10 per family.

Since none only one of my six five readers actually lives in Virginia Mathews, I'm not sure how much good this will do, but I thought it was worth mentioning since it's for such a great cause.

I'm not sure if we'll be able to attend since there's soccer practice until 5:30 or 6 followed by dinner at Chesapeake Bay Mother's house (click on her name to access her latest blog post).  She is fixing her world-famous homemade pizza, which includes garden-fresh ingredients and crust made from dough she whips up in her bread machine. She made some Sunday night, and the kids and I thought we'd died and gone to heaven. Something tells me we'll be fending off a food coma when tonight's feeding frenzy is over.

Hope your day is filled with good food fixed by someone else things. Enjoy it.

Fog

These were taken last Thursday morning from my back deck.  Queens Creek was fogged over, but that didn't discourage some early morning boaters near the marina just up the way.  As the sun rose the fog slowly burned off.

The haze and the colors are just as they appeared then.

This point of land, a very narrow peninsula which juts out into the creek, is to the left of the shots above, away from the direct light of that rising sun.

Speaking of haze and fog, the aftermath of the tornado is still being felt very acutely here.

(Yet amazingly, across the river where I work, they barely mentioned it.  We always seem to get lost in the shuffle, those of us who live in Gloucester, Mathews and Middlesex. I suppose that's what attracts us to living here, the lack of attention and spotlight. Still, it's hard to believe something this big can happen and  people just 20 or 30 minutes in another direction have no inkling that anything happened.)

Today on my way in to work I drove by Page Middle School and could not believe my eyes. How all that damage could come from such a swift weather event is beyond comprehension.

After crossing the Coleman Bridge I took my usual route up the Colonial Parkway and was shocked to discover a patch of trees that had been completely obliterated, snapped off midway up just like toothpicks. Evidently this was where the tornado passed through before crossing the York River and continuing its path of destruction as it bullied its way through Gloucester and Middlesex.

As is typical for this area, the outpouring from the community has been immense. Churches and other organizations are providing meals, clothes, showers, and even chain saw brigades. My daughter's school, forced to cancel its community Easter egg hunt Saturday due to the weather, is using all the candy and eggs to make Easter bags for those affected by the tornado.

According to an email from my daughter's school, the Red Cross is asking for the following items, which can be dropped off at Bellamy United Methodist, 4870 Chestnut Fork Road, Gloucester, from 10:00 a.m. through 2:00 p.m.

                Currently, the most pressing needs are:

                Children’s clothes – sizes small, medium and large

                Infant clothes

                Cleaning supplies

                Food items that do not need cooking or refrigeration

                (food items specifically mentioned included cereal, snacks and soft/juice drinks)

One thing that is bizarre to those of us unaccustomed to tornadoes but very much acquainted with other severe weather, is how seemingly untouched most of the area is. Unless you glanced in the general direction of Page Middle School (and the field next to it), you'd never know anything happened as you drive down an otherwise normal looking Route 17.

Deltaville is still in recovery mode. Be sure to read Deltaville Jamie's latest account of the goings on over there, where they are also struggling with decimated buildings, yet, amazingly, no loss of life.

p.s. Speaking of lost lives, I referenced three deaths in Gloucester in yesterday's post.  That number has since been revised to two storm-related deaths. 

Tornado

Thursday morning at sunrise, Queens Creek looked enchanting.  A hazy fog made it look mystical.

Fast forward to Saturday night, however, and the same view was ominous and foreboding.

Neither of these two photos has been changed or enhanced  in any way.  The colors are exactly as they appeared at the time.

Saturday evening, a tornado associated with the storm featured above hit neighboring Gloucester County and worked its way to nearby Deltaville.  Three people in Gloucester perished; numerous others (one report says upwards of 60) were injured; and the devastation to property is nothing short of astonishing.

Living in a coastal area such as this, one becomes accustomed to powerful storms.  Hurricanes, tropical storms, nor'easters, ferocious thunderstorms, flooding, even the occasional water spout--all these are a part of life here.

But tornadoes?

Tornadoes that crush school buses and turn them on their sides? We don't see those very often, thankfully.

The path of destruction left by Saturday's tornado can only be described as a war zone.

Page Middle School (which used to be Gloucester High School) sustained serious damage. Homes were taken off their foundations in some cases and completely obliterated in others.   Zoar Baptist Church in Deltaville, a fairly massive brick structure, looks like a bomb was dropped on it.

Below are some links to various sources of information on this astonishing, devastating weather event.

Click here to read  Deltaville Jamie's account.

Click here for the Gazette Journal's story.

Click here for some video of the storm's damage.

Click here for photographs.

Gloucester and Middlesex schools are closed today, not only to give families time to deal with whatever losses they are experiencing, but also, at least in Gloucester, to allow time to figure out how to handle the logistics of 580 displaced students for the remainder of the school year.

On a personal note, I am thankful this storm barely--but just barely--skirted Mathews.  There are reports of some damage in the North area, but for the most part the path of the storm danced just around us.  One quick turn to the right and we'd have been directly impacted.

I used to take comfort in the fact that I live in a brick home with a basement.  After seeing what this tornado did to Zoar Baptist Church (click here for a "before" picture) (click here for an "after" picture)  in Deltaville, I no longer take such comfort and can only say I am grateful to have been spared.

Very, very grateful.