Tornado Corridor Impressions (pt3)

OK, let's get back to the motorcycle ride through the tornado's path:

On our motorcycles, we approached the tornado damage corridor on a dirt road. We didn't know exactly where the tornado has crossed the road, but we started seeing more and larger downed tree limbs on the side of the road. Every now and then, we'd see large cylinders of tree-trunk rolled to the side of the road where a tree had fallen across the road and been chainsawed in place to reopen the road quickly.

We passed one resident on the way in to the corridor: an older guy who stopped what he was doing to watch us roll by. He was near the end of his driveway, and we were riding single file on the 1.5 car-width dirt road. His house looked fine; he was outside the actual damage corridor.

I had wondered how the tornado-area residents might feel about us gawking at their misfortune, so I didn't know how this encounter would go. I mean, the guy was *right there.* We could have high-fived him as we slowly went by.

I was last, riding sweep in our small group. Driveway Guy made eye contact with each rider, swiveling his head as each rode past. My turn came. I have him my best "I'm not a crazy biker!" smile and waved to him. He smiled and waved back. OK, he's just curious, not pissed. Good.

A few minutes later, we found where the tornado had actually crossed that road: It was like riding into a clearing in the forest.

Every tree taller than 15' or so (5m) was either snapped in half or uprooted whole. An intense aroma of pine filled the air, the scent of who-knows how many thousands of gallons of fresh pine resin bleeding from the broken forest; a vast area of freshly split wood leaking piney volatiles into the air.

It wasn't unpleasant, but my god, it was intense. It was sharper and lighter than what I normally associate with pine resin. I guess that's because this resin was fresh, unoxidized and full of the lighter, fragile compounds you only get from living wood.

The ground and parts of the road were a solid green, unbroken carpet of matted leaves and needles stripped from the now-bare trees. We passed a home on the right side of the road that had its roof ripped off. The yard was filled with debris, but framing for the new roof was already going up. There was a visual irony: The wood of the new rafters almost the same bright color as the fresh wood exposed everywhere in the smashed trees of the surrounding broken forest.

Inside the tornado damage corridor, we rode down a small hill. A utility truck--- electric company, I think--- was parked at the bottom, the utility worker chatting with a resident. Both were relaxed, leaning on their forearms, obviously comfortably chatting; the posture of people who are OK, but tired.

We rolled by, slowly and quietly, and again gave and got a wave of greeting.

As a damage voyeur, I was very glad there were no hard feeling from the folks affected. I was there from genuine curiosity, not schadenfreude. I was glad to see, both in the paper and from the posture of that utility worker and resident, that the all-out emergency is essentially over. Now comes the much longer recovery phase.

The tornado track had crossed almost perfectly perpendicular to the road we were riding. The transition between the destruction corridor and normal forest was just as abrupt exiting the corridor as it had been riding in: The forest floor became its normal color again, the overwhelming scent of pine faded rapidly to normal background levels, and the trees re-meshed their branches to form a canopy above the road. The next house we passed was unscathed.

It was a ride quite unlike any other I've been on.

And I now can say: I know what it sounds and smells like when a tornado unzips a long stretch of living forest.

Fascinating stuff!