Storm Damage Report: Severe Thunderstorm Sedgefield (5 June 2012)

It is sad and disturbing that the weather has be kept such a secret from us. What do they have to gain by doing so?

As I said in my first email, I always check sawdos, yrno, and accuweather before I go to bed at night, to see the forecast for the next day.

Had I decided to go to Knysna yesterday evening (I never leave Sedgefield, but if I had wanted to) I would have been in serious danger on the roads.

I always read the sawdos letters about the lack of support from the weather stations in SA (to put it simply) but I never realised they actually withheld life-saving information.

Accuweather is usually the first station to warn of a storm in our area. last time, about a month ago, they forecast a storm that never came, it was the first time I had seen them make a mistake. Not even they saw last nights storm coming!

Not the newspaper, nor any of the sites forecast last nights storm.

Im not sure what it was like in George or Mossel bay, but it was truly terrifying here in Sedgefield.

My neighbours 10meter brick wall was knocked down, the chemist's car park metallic awning shade cover was torn down (bent in half), numerous trees were pulled up, my son's school's electrical outlets blown to bits from the 20 second power surge, and Kingfisher drive was knee deep in landslide mud, which had to be cleared for people to get to work. And that's just what I saw, there's probably more.

I always unplug my computers in my house the minute I see lighting. I come from Tulbagh and 6 years ago a palm tree in my garden was struck (windows shattered, stench of sulphur, burning in the pouring rain), and I still haven't overcome my fear of storms.

In future I will keep the sawdos sms number in my phone and send an sms when the storm activity gets bad here.

I'm not sure about blogging, and have never used titter in my life, so I hope to help with information in the future via sms.

I am really happy with sawdis, I visit the site three or four times a day (I work from home). I don't read the papers and I don't have a TV, because I know sawdos will always tell me what I need to know.

Thank you very much for getting back to me, and for keeping sawdos going.

Carly van Heerden

SAWDOS: Carly thank you very much for you positive outlook and storm damage report. This is the kind of information that the SAWDOS need and appreciate. We are looking forward to your reports in future.