Combermere

We were told, by friends and Fiorito alike, to expect some grimly impressive sights of destruction as we drove through Combermere this weekend. Our inner disaster-porn lovers were a little disappointed at first when all we could see was the odd stand of trees on its side amid the dense foliage next to the highway, but when we came close to Lake Kamaniskeg, things got a little more dramatic. The trees covering the entire side of a slope were flattened and stripped as if something massive had been flung against it - Mothra, perhaps.

In town, it got worse. Huge tracks were cut straight through the forest on either side of the road – long, straight paths fulls of broken timber and woody gore. In one spot, the storm could be tracked as it came through woods, crossed the highway, went through some backyards (leaving the houses mostly untouched), smashed open the gates to an old cemetery (seriously), where it shaved massive trees off at the thirty- or forty-foot mark, and then, as if out of some violent, maniacal urge to fulfill the cliche, crossed over the lake and blew open a trailer park. The park was never visible from the highway before, all of it obscured by trees. Now, the whole place has been laid bare, with not much left but mud and damaged cottages.

Makes you appreciate your own fragile existence, etc etc etc...

To fulfill another cliche, I must admit that it is stunning to be presented with such visceral evidence of a tornado's fickleness. In some spots it seemed to tiptoe through one yard, barely disturbing the Sylvester and Tweety whirlygigs, and then rage like a drunken beast through the next, knocking over everything in sight. Tornadoes are thunderstorms gone off their meds.