Straight Line winds

[CKD]

I am amazed at how much damage they do. Last night it was very peaceful outside , no rain , nothing. Out of no where we heard things outside blowing everywhere. I looked out the window and saw the neighbors lawn furniture & pool things blowing towards our house. My husband ran to the back door , opened it and the wind almost blew him out of our house & he is a big 250 lb. man.
It scared us because our whole state was under severe weather not to mention tornado warnings. The alarms were not going off so we didnt know what we were in the middle of. The scarriest thing was an airplane that was flying over. We live close to the Indianapolis Airport and we do not live in the flight path so to see a plane REAL close and seeing it swaying side to side scared us more then anything. I honestly thought it was coming down and I believe my heart stopped beating for a few seconds.
It was over as soon as it started but not without leaving us a big mess. We have large tree limbs down everywhere. Doug is only working half day so that we can get the back 40 (back yard) cleaned up .

Anyone else have bad weather ?

[danforth3]

Not recently but in June we had straight line winds here and they caused considerable damage to the trees, lawn furniture, etc. We were driving in the winds on our way home and I literally had the car floored to make 25 miles an hour. When the rain hit I had to pull over briefly and just as quick as they came, the wind died down. They are as bad as a tornado sometimes. Clean up the mess, hopefully nothing serious was damaged. We were lucky, the tree overhanging our driveway crashed down, but we were out when it happened so the cars were not damaged. Now when they are reprorting severe weather my husband moves the cars across the road so that falling tree limbs won't damage the vehicles.

[Kachina]

Nothing for us yesterday here in central WV, but the day before was one of the worst thunderstorms I've ever seen.

We had torrential rain, and the thunder and lightning were constant. I like to sit on our back porch when it rains, but after about 5 minutes of that I headed for the house. The rain was blowing sideways, the wind was so gusty. Then it'd just change direction, and that was the really scary part. Ugh. I've been through too many tornados, and I hope to never see another.

Found out yesterday that a man was killed in that storm. He was sitting on his back porch, reading his Bible. Struck by lightening. How scary is that?

[The Outlaw]

Ok, I've never heard of straight line winds. Explain please?

[CKD]

If I am wrong someone please correct me. Straightline winds are winds at high speed that can knock down trees , turn over mobile homes and do considerable damage. The winds last night got up to 85 miles an hour. The difference between straightline and tornado is that in a tornado the wind is in a circular form .

[danforth3]

To add to Christy's explanation, they can be as destructive as tornados. I've seen them damage roofs to the point of removing the roof from the rafting system it sits on. Thank goodness they do not come frequently.

[CACPioneer]

Over here in southern Maine, we've been having quite a few thunderstorms and they're all quite bad. We had a thunderstorm yesterday with terrential downpours and winds that blew the rain so hard that visibility was zilch. There were severe thunderstorm warnings launced by the national weather service for winds in excess of 65 mph last night too (it hit a little north of me). A couple of weeks ago we had a huge storm that dropped about 5 inches of rain in 90 minutes. Every small stream and pond was flooded and there were downed trees everywhere. There were 3 people hit by lightening by the storm, though nobody died. So lately over here, when it rains, boy it pours (and thunders, and lightenings, and is windy... )