>About an hour ago, a large tornado passed through our beautiful downtown area causing extensive damage. Almost all high rise buildings have blown out windows, water and hail damage. Smaller structures have worse damage. The tornado continued to follow an easterly route along interstate 30 about 3 miles to the south of where I live.
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>Our local news was on at the time and actually has a camera on top of one of the buildings downtown and showed the tornado live. The scenes downtown are are very depressing. Unfortunately, the path this storm has taken is through highly populated areas. Many news agencies in this area speculated that this area was long overdue for a major storm and that this spring could be it. How right they are.
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>So far no fatalities but numerous minor injuries.

Mark,

An amazing story, made more amazing by your first-hand account, no doubt. I guess living in the south you come to expect a certain level of severe weather in the spring but this must have really taken folks by suprise.

I'm glad there were relatively few injuries, considering the dangerousness of the situation - a strong tornado hitting a major metropolitan area. Unfortunatly, I understand there were four deaths.

Did you actually see the tornado? I've always wanted to see one. Living up here in the Boston area, severe weather is few and far between and tornadoes are almost non-existent (at least near Boston - not so in central and western MA).

Thanks for sharing you harrowing account of nature's fury.

-JT