I left after this. I drove west past Stoneville until this morning and then returned from that western point. It was an outbreak of about 6 - 7 tornadoes across the state. The storm was really strange. As the Charlotte tornado touched down, High Point was getting torrential rains, over 4 inches in a hour.
When the same Charlotte system arrived in High Point, the wind stopped, there was NO rain and even the birds stayed in the trees as if nothing was going to occur. There was no hail, just think gray to dark gray clouds, very, very low to the ground. I'll say about 100 to 150 feet above the ground. They were moving very fast. I had seen that once before, during a night outbreak on the North Carolina Coastal Plain. The tornadoes could be seen as clouds above the ground, but, the system was moving so fast they never reached the ground. Really strange stuff. The appearance of the clouds were definately meso-tornadic without a funnel appearance, other than the tornado itself.
As the same storm system approached High Point, the line of storms was directly over the town. Getting out of its way was the only recourse. The people of the area have no real place to go to save their own lives. There are no basements or any safe shelters to go to. There are no alarms/sirens that sound. There is a local television station, Channel 12, that has a really interesting 'model' for such emergencies. They stay on the air until the Tornado Watch ends. They tell people there is a funnel cloud on the ground and it is now you should be taking shelter. But, there isn't any real shelter to seek. An inside room of the house. That is just to eliminate flying glass if you don't have the tornado rip up the house.
But, on radar, the line of storms was obvious and it was easy to plot a path out of the way. So, I did. I don't argue with tornadoes, they usually win.
With a real lack of shelter in the area or within their own homes, the folks here don't really react to the emergency. They don't assert a sense of self-preservation. Sad, but, true.
Every building code in any State without basements that are susceptible to tornadoes should have a requirement to have one room, at least, a tornado SECURE, not just safe, SECURE room.
An underground area is always best, but, SOLID brick structure, small, no larger than a 12 by 12, like an entrance way foyer could suffice for a 'tornado secure' room.
A foyer this size could be built at a door to a trailer as well.
In case one does not understand what is occurring when these storms 'hit?' The turbulence is above the clouds. The dew point in the troposphere has moved up and only when the system is spinning fast enough to over comes upper air 'sheer' does it make it to the surface. That is why the 'vortex force' of the tornado itself is diminished. HOWEVER, this is an early set of tornadoes and the northern hemisphere troposphere has yet to heat to capacity (direct solar rays). The torrential rains are the leading edge of the system so it has no 'systemic' issues as the rest of the storm does. It is also typical that tornadoes occur 'worse' and 'more frequently' after sunset when the air is starting to cool and there is more movement up from the ground.
Have a better day.
