The Mini-Tornado that Could - and Did!

Actually it touched down and did its damage in Northeast Philadelphia, the first tornado in Philly since 1999, according to ABC 's Action News.

There were advisory warnings for Bucks County and Eastern Montgomery County, where I live. I of course was oblivious.

Eight of us were lunching at Angelo's in Southampton, having fought heavy rains to get there, and then again when we left.

Nothing to be concerned about, I thought, as I traveled to my home in Willow Grove, down Byberry Road, and then taking a shortcut at Mason's Mill Park, an area that always gets flooded.

I decided I should drive as quickly, though safely, as I could, to outdrive any potential flooding.

What I didn't expect to see, however, as I turned right onto Huntingdon Road, were rocks in the road.

What the heck?

I had never seen rocks in the road.

And neither had Dwayne, who was outside in his light jacket, raking the rocks off the road surface. He lived in a nearby house.

He told me to be careful getting home. Parts of nearby Terwood Road were flooded. I was aghast.

I told him I might come back to interview him for an article in Patch.com. But I never got permission from my boss to write it, hence this blog post.

You can't waste good information or good photos, right Bill?

Sure enough, when I turned onto Terwood to go home, cars were wading through high waters just before Morgan's Mill Road on Terwood.

Mind-boggling.

Now where was my darn camera. And should I go back out?

There was no choice. Once a reporter, always a reporter. Besides, according to web statistics, people spend over 3 minutes on this blog.

I grab something to eat. I'd had a low blood sugar attack at Angelo's and ate two of my peanut-butter bars to stave off .... uh, death.

Rich Fleisher, who's a physician, said that any time someone is brought into a hospital and is unconscious, they're given glucose to raise their blood sugar.

I do keep glucose pills in my bag, but EATING is so much more fun, death be damned!

Here's where the rock slide began, at the corner of Knight Lane and Huntingdon Road. It was very hard to shoot pictures b/c there is nowhere to pull over on Huntingdon, and for godsakes you don't wanna cause an accident.


Huntingdon Road and its new rock collection.

Huntingdon Road joins Terwood here. To my right the cars were wading thru the water. I made a left and got home with no problem.

What luck! Mailman Tom Nolan was still delivering mail.


I caught up with Tom on Morgan's Mill Road. He told me he had made a "pit stop" on Davisville Road. What should have taken him no longer than a couple of minutes took 10 minutes.

Water came up to the bottom of his truck door, splashing him inside. He sat and waited a bit and then moved on. He was in touch with his Willow Grove office apprising them of what was going on.

Since Tom himself lives in Willow Grove, he knows the neighborhoods. “The crick runs on the other side of Davisville Road from Memorial Park and crosses under the last house on Ball Road,” he said.

The creek overflowed.

"I danced around the water," he said.

His mail delivery encompasses both curb delivery and door delivery.

"The curbs were so flooded I had to jump over them to get the mail in the curbside mail boxes," he said.

I thanked him for the information and drove around looking for storm damage. I did see two police cruisers heading up Greyhorse Road with barricades in the back of a trailer.

Back home, a school bus was parked across the street.

Hurry, I said to myself, finding my shoes and my camera. Go out and interview him.

Here's Ed Hoffman, an Upper Moreland school bus driver.

Well, the bus drivers had a heap of problems. "School let out late due to the high waters," he told me.

While the drivers were standing together waiting to pick up the students "we saw a funnel cloud over the horizon."

Later on, it was official: a tornado.

At first the kids were on the buses, said Hoffman, but they were evacuated and told to stay inside until conditions were deemed safe.

Were the kids scared? "They were excited," said Hoffman. "When it comes to weather like this, the kids are real excited."

For Hoffman and the other bus drivers, "it was a long day."

"I finally got everyone home," he said. He is in constant radio contact with "the Depot," as they refer to home base.


Ed Hoffman's bus.


One happy bus driver going back to "the Depot."