weather – Leonberger Life

Today, October 20, 2024, is the 5-year anniversary of the EF3 Tornado that ravaged our neighborhood. Our chimney was smashed by a piece of concrete flying off a neighbor’s house, our roof was damaged and needed to be replaced, our garage door was destroyed, and the wiring and pipes in the attic were destroyed. In addition, our fence was damaged, and my grill flew across the yard. The cost of the repairs was $50,000.00. However, we were lucky compared to many of our neighbors whose houses were destroyed.

A neighbor’s house with the roof ripped off. — A neighbor’s house the morning of October 21^st, 2019.

Debris on the street from a neighbor’s destroyed house. — Another neighbor’s house. This house was about 100 yards from our house. It took a direct hit from the tornado.

The house of my wife’s parents was more severely damaged than our house. The wind from the Tornado lifted my 89-year-old father-in-law up in the air and he was hit by a broken marble table that injured his back. He had a sore that was about one foot long. He did not go to the hospital. The school where our boys used to go, St. Marks School of Texas, was badly damaged and the walls of the gymnasium blew away. The neighborhood looked terrible afterwards.

My wife Claudia is walking among the debris in my in-laws house. — Inside Claudia’s parents’ house. This was the morning after. We are walking into their house to check on them (that’s my wife).

It was also a tough time for our Leonberger dog Bronco. He was more than 12 years old, which is old for a Leonberger, and he had various age-related illnesses. Earlier in October he had amputated a toe due to a type of cancer called squamous cell carcinoma. One week after that we discovered a large deep ulcerous sore on the same paw a few inches above the surgical scar. Fortunately, it was not cancerous, as we first thought, but we would have to treat this sore in addition to nursing him back from his amputation. In addition, he also had the first signs of geriatric-onset laryngeal paralysis polyneuropathy (or GOLPP).

Our Leonberger Bronco is in the background. Our pug Daisy is sitting on a chair in the kitchen. — Bronco our Leonberger and Daisy our Pug the evening before the big storm. None of us suspected what was about to happen.

We lost power for four days due to the tornado and about one week after the tornado Bronco had a congestive heart failure. He eventually recovered but October 2019 was a very difficult month for him.

Bronco is laying on the ground facing the broken fence. He has a plastic bag around his bandage. — Bronco had just had a toe amputation. He did not blow down our fence.

Mini-Australian Shepherd standing guard over medical equipment next to his big brother the large Leonberger Bronco. — We had to change Bronco’s bandages every now and then but Rollo, our mini–Australian Shepherd made sure we did it right.

Rollo our mini-Australian Shepherd is on the left and Bronco our Leonberger is on the right. He is wearing a bandage on his back leg. — Bronco and Rollo a few days after the Tornado.

I remember October 20, 2019, as if it was yesterday. I was sitting outside in my backyard drinking my favorite SMASH IPA, Yellow Rose, from Lone Pint, Texas, ABV 6.8%. IPA stands for India Pale Ale, a type of beer that contains a lot of hops. SMASH IPA is an IPA brewed with one type of Malts and one type of Hops (Single Malt, Single Hop). The single hop in this case is Mosaic. My phone started making a loud sound. It was an alarm announcing a tornado warning and, in the distance, I could hear a faint tornado siren. At first, I thought it was nothing but when I saw the lightning approaching, I decided to go inside. Two minutes later a hailstorm made things very loud, the wind was strong, and the house shook, and then we heard a loud explosion. That was a concrete block that had smashed our chimney.

A photo of a beer glass next to a can of Yellow Rose IPA. The beer label shows a young woman in a yellow and green outfit. — I was sitting in my backyard drinking Yellow Rose my favorite SMASH IPA, not knowing that a tornado was advancing down the street nearby.

After the wind had died down a bit, I opened the door to the backyard, and what I saw shocked me. My gas grill had flown across the patio. There were bricks and pieces of concrete all over the patio and the lawn. There was a big sheet of metal lying on the patio. Big tree branches covered the lawn. There was debris everywhere. We had also lost power. It turns out that the EF3 tornado had gone through our neighborhood and passed within fifty to one hundred yards of our house.

This house is totally destroyed. — Another neighbor’s house (a bit further away from us).

My wife Claudia asked me to go check on her parents. I drove about 50-100 yards when a neighbor’s roof lying across the road stopped me. I turned around but this time I was stopped by a large pile of trees lying across the street. So, I started walking, but this time I was stopped by a group of firemen telling me that it was too dangerous to be outside. They told me to go back home, and I did.

The entire top of this house is gone. — This is the next-door neighbor of Claudia’s (my wife) parents.

I can add that we got some unexpected help from our congressman at the time, Colin Allred, congressional district 32. My wife left the neighborhood in her car, but the police would not let anyone back in. This made it difficult to, for example, go shopping. I complained about this on Colin Allred’s Facebook page and within hours I received an email from Colin Allred’s legislative director (Judith). They had contacted city hall and the police and now the police would allow residents back in the neighborhood as long as they could show ID. Colin Allred’s office had my email from a previous communication. I did not leave that with my Facebook comment. My wife was happy since she now could go shopping.

Below are some additional photos that I took, showing the carnage in the neighborhood.

The Gap is a big store, but it had the entire backside ripped off. — The remains of the Gap, a store at a nearby shopping center.

The house is completely flattened. A large tree is destroyed. It has no branches. — Destroyed house in the neighborhood.

Crashed cars and destroyed stores. — View of the shopping center in our neighborhood.

The yellow school bus is wrapped around a tree. — This was a school bus belonging to the school where my boys went.

Trees are ripped up, vehicles are crushed. — Streetview from the neighborhood.

A big nice-looking house destroyed by a tornado. — Another house in the neighborhood.

A photo taken from the inside of a destroyed office. — The remains of the veterinary clinic where we used to take our dogs. Luckily there were no animals staying overnight at this time.

A photo of severely damaged house. The roof is lying in the street. — Our street, just two/three houses down from us.

Today, or rather yesterday, since it is past midnight, was a wild day here in Dallas. We had severe thunderstorms with strong winds ripping up trees around the neighborhood as well as our patio parasol and one of our small trees. There were large hails, lightning and thunder, flash floods, as well as a tornado. Luckily the tornado was not anywhere near us, but we lost power during a significant part of the day, just like more than 650,000 people here in Dallas. Oncor said it will take 8 days to restore power to everyone. Our mini-Australian Shepherd Rollo is very afraid of bad weather, so he had a bad day. I am sure many other dogs had a bad day too.

A threatening supercell with lightning — A so called supercell but without a tornado. Stock Photo ID: 1768468151 by Laura Hedien.

When I talked about the weather with friends and family, I realized that many people do not know the difference between a tornado and a hurricane, so I thought I would explain. A hurricane is a big rotating storm system originating in the ocean that sometimes makes landfall and devastates our coasts. Hurricanes are big, thousands of square miles and even a million square miles. A hurricane has wind speeds of 74 miles per hour (mph) or higher. That’s 119 kilometers per hour or 33 meters per second. They are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and the northeast Pacific, and Typhoons in the northwest Pacific, and otherwise just cyclones.

Satellite photo of Mexico, southeastern United States and the Caribbean. A hurricane is approaching from the east. — Satellite photo of hurricane approaching Cuba and Florida. Stock Photo ID: 2202605185 by Emre Akkoyun.

A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cloud. They originate with thunderstorms, especially supercells, and are more of an inland phenomenon even though hurricanes can sometimes generate tornadoes. They are much smaller than hurricanes in area, almost always much smaller than a square mile, or just 10 or 30 meters across. The reason they can be as deadly as hurricanes is that they tend to have stronger winds and they appear and disappear quicker thus taking people by surprise. Tornadoes can happen anywhere, but they are more common in North America and especially in tornado-alley. Despite tornado alley’s small size, a quarter of all significant tornadoes in the world occurred there according to a study (1921 – 1995).

A large well-formed tornado over the plains. — A tornado. Stock Photo ID: 2369175167 by g images.com.

Below is a list of how hurricanes (Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) and tornadoes (original Fujita scale) are classified. The unit is miles per hour (mph). Also note that as the wind speed doubles the force quadruples, so an F5/261 mph Tornado has a force that is 2.8 times stronger than category five/155 mph hurricane.

Hurricane category one: Winds 74 to 95 mph. Tornado F1 : 73 to 112 mph
Hurricane category two: Winds 96 to 110 mph. Tornado F2 : 113 to 157 mph
Hurricane category three: Winds 111 to 130 mph. Tornado F3: 158 to 206 mph
Hurricane category four: Winds 131 to 155 mph. Tornado F4 : 207 to 260 mph
Hurricane category five: Winds greater than 155 mph. Tornado F5 : 261 to 318 mph

Tornado Alley is indicated in red, orange and yellow covering north Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, and the corners of Minnesota, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. — Map showing Tornado Alley. It includes north Texas / Dallas. Stock Vector ID: 1719764089 by Adansijav Official.

The weather today reminded me about what happened on October 20, 2019. An EF3 Tornado ravaged our neighborhood, and it came close to our house, about 100 yards, and it damaged our house. Our chimney was smashed by a piece of concrete flying off a neighbor’s house, and our roof was damaged and needed to be replaced. In addition, our garage door was destroyed, and the wiring and pipes in the attic were destroyed, our fence was damaged, and my grill flew across the yard. The cost of the repairs was $50,000.00.

However, we were lucky. Several of our neighbors’ houses were totally destroyed and my wife’s parents house was a lot more damaged than our house was. The wind from the Tornado lifted my 89-year-old father-in-law up in the air and he was hit by a broken marble table that injured his back. The school where our boys used to go, St. Marks School of Texas, was badly damaged and the walls of the gymnasium blew away.

I was sitting outside drinking a beer, a Yellow Rose, when my phone started making a loud sound. It was an alarm announcing a tornado warning and, in the distance, I could hear a faint tornado siren. At first, I thought it was nothing but when I saw the lightning approaching, I decided to go inside. Two minutes later a hailstorm made things very loud, the wind was strong, and the house shook, and then we heard a loud explosion. That was our chimney being smashed.

I can add that October of 2019 was a very difficult month for our Leonberger Bronco. He was getting old. He was twelve years old, and he had the first signs of geriatric-onset laryngeal paralysis polyneuropathy (or GOLPP), which made his breathing a bit labored and affected his gait. In addition, he had developed another case of squamous cell carcinoma, a toe-nail cancer, and this time on his right rear paw. We amputated his toe on October 3—the day he turned twelve years and three months old.

You can see our mini-Australian Shepherd inspecting Bronco’s bandage change. He is standing over the bandages and the solutions and Bronco’s paw. — We had to change Bronco’s bandages every now and then but Rollo, our mini–Australian Shepherd made sure we did it right.

The surgery went well, but after around ten days it was discovered that he had a large deep ulcerous sore on the same paw a few inches above the surgical scar. Fortunately, it was not cancerous, as we first thought, but we would have to treat this sore in addition to nursing him back from his amputation. Then on October 20 we were visited by the tornado. One week after the tornado Bronco had his first heart failure. So, something bad happened every week in October 2019. It was a dark time for Bronco. However, he took it very well, he kept his brave and positive outlook on life, and he was able to recover.

Below are a few more photos from that day.