358156 hp
At large, whereabouts unknown.
I live in Lincoln, NE and this was our afternoon today. I was a little close to the situation this time. Sorry, no pics, my phones camera wouldn't initialize when I needed it. I see we made it on some of the national news services today. I composed this as a reply to Brad, who was checking with me to see if I was okay. It's a pretty good synopsis of my afternoon, at least part of it anyway. All of this happened in just a few minutes, and from start to finish this was less than an hour and a half from the time it started until I left for home.
I work just outside the city limits in the northeast corner. I was working on some paperwork when one of the mechanics comes in from the shop and tells us that there;s a tornado just south of the building. At that moment, the power went out. So we evacuated the front office and go into the first shop where a cluster of people are looking out the shop door windows, filming the tornado as it goes by, a little over a hundred yards away. It plowed into the neighboring business and was tossing debris all over. As it hit the other building it seemed to stop moving, and built up quite a bit before jumping over Hwy 6 and tracking through the farmers field there.
Then the tornado dissipated, but the same wall cloud dropped yet another funnel and kept moving away from us to the northeast. It looked like it might "hook" and come back towards us but it didn't. It did however drop more funnels, one of which hit a business less than a mile away from us before hitting the interstate and laying a semi-truck & trailer on it's side. From there it progressed into Waverly and did a lot of damage we're not being told about yet.
Then we got to watch a steady stream of emergency vehicles from eastern and southern Lancaster County scream by. Nothing was spared, we estimated thirty-ish Police, Sheriffs Dept, & State Patrol vehicles screaming towards Garner Industries, and Waverly. I can't even estimate the number of fire trucks I saw today. We had units responding from Raymond, Lincoln, Ceresco, and Southeast Rural Fire District. Then came a swarm of vehicles from Lincoln Electric System.
After about an hour of this, we decided to go home. I started into Lincoln and saw that LPD & the County Sheriffs Office Deputies had Hwy 6 blocked off at 84th St, and also at 70th St. The power was out from about 56th St. on east. My final view of the situation was a Startran (City) bus headed east on Cornhusker as fast as it could probably go, being escorted by LPD cruisers with full lights & siren. It was likely headed to Garner Industries to start evacuating their employees to the Event Center from their damaged building.
I work just outside the city limits in the northeast corner. I was working on some paperwork when one of the mechanics comes in from the shop and tells us that there;s a tornado just south of the building. At that moment, the power went out. So we evacuated the front office and go into the first shop where a cluster of people are looking out the shop door windows, filming the tornado as it goes by, a little over a hundred yards away. It plowed into the neighboring business and was tossing debris all over. As it hit the other building it seemed to stop moving, and built up quite a bit before jumping over Hwy 6 and tracking through the farmers field there.
Then the tornado dissipated, but the same wall cloud dropped yet another funnel and kept moving away from us to the northeast. It looked like it might "hook" and come back towards us but it didn't. It did however drop more funnels, one of which hit a business less than a mile away from us before hitting the interstate and laying a semi-truck & trailer on it's side. From there it progressed into Waverly and did a lot of damage we're not being told about yet.
Then we got to watch a steady stream of emergency vehicles from eastern and southern Lancaster County scream by. Nothing was spared, we estimated thirty-ish Police, Sheriffs Dept, & State Patrol vehicles screaming towards Garner Industries, and Waverly. I can't even estimate the number of fire trucks I saw today. We had units responding from Raymond, Lincoln, Ceresco, and Southeast Rural Fire District. Then came a swarm of vehicles from Lincoln Electric System.
After about an hour of this, we decided to go home. I started into Lincoln and saw that LPD & the County Sheriffs Office Deputies had Hwy 6 blocked off at 84th St, and also at 70th St. The power was out from about 56th St. on east. My final view of the situation was a Startran (City) bus headed east on Cornhusker as fast as it could probably go, being escorted by LPD cruisers with full lights & siren. It was likely headed to Garner Industries to start evacuating their employees to the Event Center from their damaged building.
