Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Evidence of Storms

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Good morning, this is Topher from Washington Church of Christ bringing you a positive message minute.

5am Storm Front in Washington
from my phone
After a strong storm front blew through Washington at 5am leaving power outages and a couple downed trees in its wake, my initial assessment from all my years working tornado chainsaw crews is that our city had strong straight line winds, some even in the 60-70mph range.   Driving main roads and highways throughout the entire city at 5:30am and surveying the damage helped me in determining what I think this storm brought.  You can generally tell the type of storm by the evidence it leaves behind.

Jesus said much the same thing about people.  In Matthew 7:17 He says, "Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit."  In other words, you can tell the type of person by the evidence they leave behind.  Does their life show consistently damaged relationships, paranoia, fear, and hurtful words?  Do they spread the fruit of the Spirit such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? (Galatians 5:23-24) Let's make a decision today, that you and I will leave behind us evidence of good fruit.  Today, you can start by helping your neighbors cleanup tree limbs and trash cans.  You'll be glad you did. 

Here is a copy and paste from my Facebook.  It's my general damage assessment after driving around town for 30mins from 5:30am-6:00am.
Drawing on my cell phone of power outage
"Power and damage assessment. At 5 a.m. straight-line winds came through Washington with a well-defined front-line. Power was lost to the Southeastern quadrant of Washington. This map shows my estimation of the power outage while driving around at 5:30 a.m. Power looks like it was restored at 5:50 a.m. As I've driven around Washington, majority I've seen so far are small limbs down on roadways. Strongest winds look to be on the north side of town around Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. One tree across the road on Highway 57 on the north side of town. I don't see any building or structural damage as I drive around that looks like evidence of tornado, but those were some strong straight-line winds. This is just my unofficial assessment from years of organizing chainsaw crews to chase the tornadoes."  My general estimate is that the north side of town saw 60-70 mph straight line winds while at my house we experienced 40-50 mph winds.  I only saw two whole trees down near Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.  There were several small limbs and debris blown around over the entire city. *Update 7:10am* From social media posts, it appears the power is out in the Cumback and Glendale areas southeast of Washington.

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