And Now . . . Tornadoes

At about 2:30am last night I was awoken by extremely violent wind, rain, and lightening as a front passed through the New Orleans area. It was intense, but it seemed to pass through very quickly--like in less than thirty minutes. At one point, the sky was nearly continuously illuminated from the lightening strikes in the distance reflecting off of the low cloud cover. Turns out several tornadoes were spun as the weather passed--with Lakeview and Kenner (including Louis Armstrong Aiport) taking the hit.

Before I heard the report of tornadoes this morning, I noticed a portion of the sound abatement wall on one of the I-10/I-610 overpasses had been blown apart as it's debris spread was all over the road. Also, a friend told me he noticed significant damage to a self-storage place on Jefferson Highway.

Here are some pictures from WWL and the accompanying report.

As the WWL story cites: "Don't ever ask the question, what else could happen?"

UPDATE: On the way home from work this evening, I encountered an entire section of Old Jefferson from a few blocks east of Ocshner to the parish line with no power--pitch black dark with exception to the headlights of cars. Work crews in large bucket trucks were on Jefferson Highway and River Road working on the problem. The self-storage place noted above got absolutely hammered. Can you imagine moving salveagable possessions from a flooded house in the city into a storage facility and then that storage facility gets hit by a freak tornado?