Twister+Blog


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Hi! Welcome to our 5th grade blog. We are reading the novel Night of the Twisters by Ivy Ruckman which led us off on a study of tornadoes. We would love it if you could share a personal story you have that involves a tornado. To do this, please click on the edit button in the upper right hand corner and don't forget to __save__ when you finish!! If you have pictures, please include them! Please tell us your name, age, and where you are from. We look forward to reading about all of the interesting experiences people have had! We also would appreciate it if you would click on the spreadsheet link above and fill out your information so we can add it to our data! Thanks!

Hello River Ridge 5th Graders! Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Julie Reese and I am Mrs. Reese's sister-in-law. My tornado experience happened on June 8, 1984, in Barneveld, Wisconsin, at approximately ten minutes to one in the morning. The storm woke me up, I closed the window, put my pillow over my head and the next thing I know I felt debris coming in the window. I heard the building next door go down (sounded like a tree falling over) and thought that it was this debris coming in my window. I could hear someone from the building next door calling for help, but knew that I couldn't do anything to help them. I crawled out of bed and walked through my apartment, opened the door and saw a mattress laying in the street and thought that was weird. I started walking down the street and was approximately a half block from my apartment when it hit me that a tornado had gone through our town. Many people heard it (they say it sounded like a freight train), but I do not recall hearing this. The tornado basically went right through the middle of town, following the main road through our town. Nine people lost their lives in this tornado. I feel we were fortunate not to have lost more lives as this was a very strong tornado (F5). No tornado warning was issued that evening, so the sirens were not set off to warn us of the tornado headed our way. - Julie

Hi River Ridge! My name is Laura Goldstein and I am a computer teacher and technology staff developer in Great Neck, New York. The day before school ended last year we were hit by what we thought was a tornado. Some of our fifth graders wrote personal narratives about their experiences to share with you. Here are a few: __The June Tornado Incident__ By Bradford It started off as a perfect day. The sun was shining and I was at my house. I was busy watching TV. Then suddenly I heard a loud boom. I shut the TV off. I went to the basement to ask my grandma what was happening. She said she didn’t know what I was talking about (apparently she had no idea what was happening). I told her that we were in a middle of a storm. She seemed to have believed me. I went upstairs. It was still raining out. I went back into the basement and told my grandma to see what was happening. It wasn’t raining hard, not hard at all. By the time we got up the stairs it was sunny out, but I had proof. I motioned her to see the drops of rain on the ground. She and I were both shocked to see what was on the ground. She was shocked to see it actually rained and I was shocked to see that these weren’t normal raindrops. Usually raindrops are small and there are tons of them on the ground. These raindrops were about the size of a fist but there weren’t many of them like there should be in a normal storm. I suppose this was a hailstorm! This was my strange and shocking experience of this storm that occurred in June. __Tornado in Great Neck__ By Max It was a nice day outside. I was playing basketball with my friends. All of a sudden it started to get cloudy. A minute later, it started to rain. Then it started raining harder. My friend’s mom told them to get inside and told me to run home. I live in the back of his house. By the time I got to my back door I was soaking wet. As soon as I got inside and turned around I saw the tree in my backyard had fallen down. I stood watching out my window. Tree branches were flying everywhere. I could not believe how windy it was. After just five minutes it was all over. It had stopped raining and even the sun came out. So I went outside to look around. I saw the tree in my backyard that fell had gone through my neighbor’s yard and even went through the car’s windshield. I went down another road and saw a tree that had crashed somebody’s garages and their car too. At the baseball field in town the gate backstop was completely ripped off. All the power went out in many houses and the streetlights too. Since all the power went out, the refrigerator in my house didn’t work or the air conditioning. We couldn't eat any food, so we had to go to my grandpa’s house in Queens. They only got a little drizzle not the big storm that hit Great Neck. It was one of the scariest days in my life. __My Tornado Experience__ By Rachel On June 24, 2010 a tornado hit Great Neck. Five minutes before the tornado hit, my mom ordered Chinese food. My dad was at work so I was going to go with my mom to pick it up. Right when we were about to leave the tornado came. My mom and I waited for it to end. It only lasted five minutes. We went in the car to get the Chinese food because she knew that the food was already made and she didn’t want it to go to waste. We didn’t know how bad the storm was and we had no idea what we were in for. There was about one hour and 30 minutes of traffic to get to a place that would normally take 15 minutes. We drove all around every street and we still could not get there. We turned to a street that was caved in by trees. We saw a nice man next to us in his car and he said he had been driving around town all day too. He was trying to get out of Great Neck because he didn’t live around here. We were following him because he said he thought he knew a good way out. We came upon a HUGE tree blocking the road. There were a bunch of branches as BIG and LONG as my car! The man (that was now following us because my mom was showing him how to get out) got out of his car and moved the branches so we could get through. After we got through, we got to the resturaunt going over pointy parts of the trees. When we got home I checked to see if the tires were okay and it turns out there was a flat. We got it fixed the next day but the repairman had to come to my house to fix the flat because we couldn’t move the car.