[Granville-Hough] LittleTornadoes - 3 Feb 2009
Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough
gwhough at oakapple.net
Sun May 2 06:24:19 PDT 2010
Cousin Tom Richardson mentioned local
tornadoes and disturbances in a general storm, and we did once
experience one. I suppose I was 8 or 9 years old, but it left a big
impression on my memory.
LITTLE-BITSY LOCAL TORNADOES. You could have a general hurricane with
local disturbances which amounted to a tornado, or you could have a
pretty sharp local tornado, all your very own. One Sunday morning my
oldest brother, Harold Hough, was visiting home from Miss. A&M (now
Miss. State Univ.), where he was in college. We were having a leisurely
breakfast listening to Harold, and my mother and father went on out to
the barn to milk the cows. It began to rain, then the wind picked up.
We looked out to the west and it looked like the tall pine trees on the
hill beyond the meadow were falling. Harold took us to the strongest
room in the house and put us next to the hallway in the center of the
house. We had no storm pit. We learned later we were supposed to go
into the log smokehouse. Between the flurries of wind and rain, we
could see the barn, where my mother and father were. As we watched, the
corrogated tin roofing of the barn began to blow away. Our corncrib was
on the southwest side, and that is where the roofing began to go. We
could do nothing except hope that our mother and father would be safe.
They had actually gone to the far side of the log barn and had gotten
into the strongest stable. They were with the meanest mule we had (Old
Blue), but he was so frightened he welcomed company. They were quite
safe with Old Blue.
When the storm passed on we could assess the damage. Some of the
corrogated tin sheets had hit the oak trees (in our hogpen) and tangled
in the branches 30 feet up the tree. When the trees were cut 20 years
later, the tin sheets were still there. The wind had ripped about a
third of the covering from our corn crib, so we had to get that part
re-covered. No animals or persons were hurt, and we could find no one
else in the community who had damage. So tornadoes could be very local.
I got the smoke house well in mind in case it happened again.
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