Tornado today

[Fr. Frank]

I watched a tornado touch down today about 500' or 600' from my house in Valparaiso.

I had just come home from visiting at the hospital, and heard about the tornado warning on the radio driving home. I pulled the pickup into the carport, and as I was getting out I heard a weird whistling noise, that at first I thought was coming from my truck. I turned around to look for the source of the noise and in the driving rain saw a little itty-bitty tornado come down at rip some branches off a big cedar tree and then immediately dissipate. It hit the main power line, too, but did no damage to that. Couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 feet across at the tip at most where it touched. I've seen dust devils that were bigger. It was kind of surreal. I looked for it to reform, but nada. I understand from a parishioner who works ATC at Eglin that radar picked up 4 or 5 tornadoes in the clouds in the Shalimar/Eglin/Valparaiso area, but they didn't know that any had actually touched.

Other tornadoes in the area weren't so small. Couple of towns pretty close to here, Silverhill and Theodore Alabama got slammed.