I'm hoping for not too much damage today. It's already started, the sky is brown and the water in the toilet bowl is sloshing from wind gusts down the vent. Sustained winds of 50 and gusts to 80 today. Last time we had a day like this there were Semi's and RV's blown over on the interstate that runs through town. Just guessing tomorrow will be filled with replacing snapped fence posts at a minimum.

That is a really strong wind.

So is this worse than the illegals aliens swarming across the border and squatting in houses and so on?

Fence posts, a few trees, not so bad.

if you want to see video of dust traveling 80 miles an hour. This is just outside of town.

That's tornado wind!

And F-1 tornado is 73-112 mph.

Not too bad. I have fence down at a few, one hole in the roof where the leg of a trampoline went through the decking, a few broken windows, and lots of cleanup. The dust is so thick on my front porch that you can't even tell that there is a mat under it.

Last time we had this I had shingle roofs separate from the sheathing along the edge and roll up like a carpet onto the back side of the house. Fortunately, I didn't have that this time. Also, some trucks blown over on the interstate which caused a major pileup (see video above) of about 40 vehicles because visibility was near zero. I really felt sorry for law enforcement and the fire departments, they had to spend all day out in it.

Weather service recorded 87 mile an hour gusts mid afternoon.

Yet another reason I don't allow trampolines.

Happy to hear that you made it out rather well.

I was away for Spring Break. We were in Hattiesburg, MS-- but DH saw the forecast and asked to leave a day early in favor of overnighting in Monroe. I was already in my pajamas for the night, but we got dressed and packed. We forfeited a night's stay at our hotel--- but it was the right choice with a Level-5 tornado risk.

The winds had hit our town as well. When MikeA described the color of the sky, I knew exactly what kind of weather that was. :P Now that I'm back home, I need to go out and survey all the roofs and see who needs patching. One tenant was proactive and texted me to let me know--- I was able to get his scheduled with the roofers. The other tenants, not so communicative. We'll get it figured out, but it's an expense I would rather not deal with. It's also why I've started shifting to metal roofs. It's a higher cost, but they're much sturdier, especially with all this wind we tend to get.

Here's some great footage one of the stormchasers took while he was watching semi's tip over on the highway.