Imagine a 6 by 6 oak post, sunk three feet into the earth as a support for an outbuilding. Now imagine wind strong enough to suck it up out of the ground like a golf tee and toss it the length of four football fields. That's what the NWS surveyors found in Virginia where one of Sunday's three tornadoes struck. And that was only an EF-0 twister. Here's more on the Enhanced Fujita scale of tornado intensity.

The initial reports from the NWS Sterling forecast office are now available online. Click here. For the specifics on the Maryland damage, click here. For the Virginia details, click here.

There's also this nifty map of rainfall reports from the precip on Sunday and Monday.  It's a bit disorienting, covering just the Sterling office's forecast area. That's the Western Shore of the bay on the right, with Harford County at upper right, St. Mary's at lower right. The Pennsylvania line runs across the top, as far as Allegany County. (Garrett is covered by the Pittsburgh office.) The bulk of the map covers Northern Virginia.