Tornado (but only an EF1)

Peter Burkholder — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:18:00 -0700

On Sunday, April 20, our family joined some friends at a local indoor splash pool. We were expecting nothing but rain, rain, and more rain, and needed to get the kids good and worn out.

The boys had a great time, and had finally gotten up the gumption to go through the giant slide that started up near the facility ceiling, did a figure 8 outside, and landed with a splash into the bottom pool. We were waiting in line for our third run when I commented to Shannen that it looked like it was raining buckets outside. Just then we could see the weather going crazy, with sheets of rain slashing horizontally and the trees doing a crazy dance. I shouted to Shannen to take cover, and we were running down the stairs each with one boy when the lifeguards starting blowing on their whistles to clear the pool.

What I thought was just a severe thunderstorm was an EF1 tornado that missed us by 150 feet.

Here’s a link to local TV report on the Maryland weather. Skip the first half of the story to get to the part about the Chillum, Maryland tornado.

VIDEO

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE REPORT

MY GOOGLE MAP—I went to the splash park today to map this out. Because we left on Sunday through the front, we didn’t see what had happened out on the back parking lot. If you zoom in, you can see the outside loop of the blue tube slide:

Since we were just a few feet below the roof, I shudder to think what would’ve come of us had it been our roof that came off instead.

Ellipsis: Tag family

Tornado (but only an EF1)