Thunderstorms can be very bad... Not many sounds as scary as the Tornado Warning Siren going off!

Uh, in spring a "severe thunderstorm" passed through my area with 60mph straight line winds and small stream flash flooding; about 20 miles east several tornados set down. The news coverage of that area was wild. The video showed a single traffic lane cleared on a suburban street lined by downed trees stacked about 10 feet high waiting to be hauled away.

It's a local event but very important to the people who live in that area. I would almost prefer a hurricane, because you have days to decide what to do - we had a couple of hours at most with this.

Anyway, my 3 mile normal commute took me about 1 hour 30 minutes to traverse with my vehicle. It was almost 30 minutes before I could get off base - all three exit roads were blocked with trees and/or power lines. The one road block not including power lines was cleared pretty quickly. Once on *city limit* streets, after trying 3 of 4 reasonable alternate routes, I had to wait another 30 minutes for a tree to be cleared.

It turned out, I was out of power for about 3 days over this thunderstorm, and I live withing the city limits. The ground was saturated before this happened and this storm brought down mostly huge old oaks. One of the trees that took my power out had a 4 foot diameter trunk at the base. It took them more than a day to clear a 1 mile stretch of road which my power line ran along. Obviously, I could have walked home, but didn't what to leave my truck if I didn't have too.

I did find out that Petzl headlamps are great items. I used a Petzl some and an Everyready to go around the house and read with. The Petzl had this pretty white light while the Everyready had this really annoying yellow spot in the center.

I also found that a cheap aluminum messkit was garbage after almost melting it over a propane stove burner. Also, I can't cook eggs without a good non-stick skillet.

-Tommy