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Today (actually last night at 1 AM) is 30 years since the famous 1988 Raleigh tornado went through, killing 4 (2 in Raleigh, 2 farther east) and destroying a KMart, which many found somewhat amusing.
The KMart stood at TownRidge Square where a Wal-Mart was rebuilt in its place.
I was only about 1/4 mile away, just off Lynn Rd, and awake, and heard it go through (I thought it sounded more like a very loud lawn mower than a freight train) but it dodn't even blow over our garbage cans, left on the street for pickup. But driving to work the next day gave me a real taste of how a tornado can completely destroy one house while two doors down, everything was fine.
I was all of 16 days old when this happened. I do remember going to that shopping center as a kid and always hearing about how half of it got destroyed by the torando though.
For some reason I thought it was a Winn-Dixie that got re-built there.
The 2011 Tornado that WRAL and ABC11 camera's caught as tore through just behind the Raleigh skyline.
My dad's yard in Cary (Lochmere) had several chunks of insulation/debris from buildings presumably taken out about a mile or two east of there.
I was living in an apartment off Ray Rd next to where Lynn Rd now goes to Leesville. The tornado removed the roof off my apartment, among other bits of damage. There were so many trees down that to get the rescue vehicles up Ray Rd they used chain saws to cut the trees on both sides of the road and bulldozed them out of the way.
I was all of 16 days old when this happened. I do remember going to that shopping center as a kid and always hearing about how half of it got destroyed by the torando though.
For some reason I thought it was a Winn-Dixie that got re-built there.
The 2011 Tornado that WRAL and ABC11 camera's caught as tore through just behind the Raleigh skyline.
My dad's yard in Cary (Lochmere) had several chunks of insulation/debris from buildings presumably taken out about a mile or two east of there.
Winn-Dixie was actually in that shopping center. It was located in the space that Big Lots currently occupies.
Winn-Dixie was actually in that shopping center. It was located in the space that Big Lots currently occupies.
Ah ok I haven't been up that way in a long time. We used to live right off Leesville road until I was around 7 or 8 and we would go to dinner at the Lonestar Steakhouse in that shopping center A LOT. Somewhere at my mom's house I'm sure she still has the cowboy hats they'd give to little kids that my sister and I collected.
Staff there would talk about how the other side of the shopping center, where the Winn-Dixie was, got destroyed by a tornado. I was terrified of tornados as a kid because of that story haha.
I just asked my coworker about it and he said he was up at 1 AM listening to Pink Floyd with his buddies when he heard that there was a tornado. He and his friends drove up there and helped a baby that had got thrown out of a house that got leveled by the tornado. The baby and parents survived luckily.
It missed my house by 4 blocks. The continuous lightning woke up my wife and me. I remember hearing a roar, punctuated by snapping noises. It took a few seconds to realize what was happening. We grabbed the baby and the dog, and as we went down the stairs our ears popped from the pressure change. Moral: yes, it sounds like a freight train, but if you don't start moving immediately when you first hear it, you'll be too late. Of course, if an F4 makes a direct hit on your house, survival is a crap shoot anyway.
A 25-foot section of the corrugated steel roof of the K-Mart wound up in a neighbor's tree, wrapped around the trunk of an oak in a U shape. It had to have been moving at over 100 mph to do that.
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