Hiker finds storm remnants atop Whitetop Mountain
http://www2.tricities.com/news/2011/...in-ar-1043635/
Credit: Doug Ogle
Ron Hubbard of Roaring Gap, N.C. inspects a piece of aluminum that was found along a ridge on Whitetop Mountain.
By JOE TENNIS
Published: May 17, 2011
» 1 Comment | Post a Comment
WHITETOP, Va. --
For Doug Ogle, it’s common to find a forest of spruce and a few ferns along the ridges of Whitetop Mountain.
Ogle, 64, just might know Whitetop Mountain better than anyone, having studied the mile-high peak while teaching biology for 30 years at Virginia Highlands Community College.
The Saltville, Va., resident also recently spoke on “The Great White Topp’d Mountain” during the Mount Rogers Naturalist Rally in Konnarock, Va.
But, last week, while walking with friend Ron Hubbard of Roaring Gap, N.C., Ogle found something he had never seen in nearly 60 years of exploring Whitetop: a full-sized, 4-by-12-foot, fresh piece of aluminum roofing, laying in the middle of the spruce forest.
“I was taken aback for a minute until I realized it was probably removed from a building in Chilhowie or Glade and dropped at Whitetop at least six air miles away,” said Ogle, a resident of Saltville, Va.
“It was a really interesting piece of roofing,” Ogle said. “It was real high quality. I just about fell over. It looked like a piece of a car.”
The roofing lay along the Grayson-Smyth county line, about a half-mile from the Appalachian Trail – and at least a mile from any road.
Presumably, the aluminum came from the tornados that hit the region April 28, Ogle figured.
Hubbard, a retired meteorologist for the Federal Aviation Administration, told Ogle that the piece of roofing would have likely been sucked up 20,000 feet into the recent tornado and then dropped many miles away – at Whitetop.
“It would have gone straight up and then forced out at the top,” Ogle said. “Powerful storm, to say the least.”
[email protected]
(276) 791-0704