A few hours before I had to get up at 5 a.m. Thursday, I awoke to the sound of crackling thunder and my bedroom window curtain violently flapping. Rain could be heard battering the house and a cool breeze gushed into my small apartment. I recall mechanically rising as if my body was apart from my consciousness and shutting the window. A glance at the clock revealed it was just shy of three in the morning. Though I didn’t know at the time, this was life foreshadowing my work day.

When daylight came, I would learn that as I was doing my best to fall back asleep in Norwich, a tornado was touching down in Pharsalia. When I got back up for work, there was a text message telling me the Emergency Command Center (EOC) in Norwich had been activated due to flash flooding.

As I came into the office, I was also greeted by a very awake and excitable Melissa Stagnaro who informed me she had heard of a number of structures being knocked down by the storm’s strong winds in McDonough.

A walk across a parking lot and I found myself in the EOC, located on the second floor the Norwich Police Station. The center’s walls are lined with computer workstations and the screens depict all kinds information through maps and graphs. When mobilized, all emergency responses in the county are directed from it.

Officials confirmed a number of structures were indeed knocked down in the Pharsalia and McDonough area. Eventually though it was determined that nearly all of them were actually in the Town of Pharsalia, near the border the two municipalities share.

At the time the wind damage took a second seat to the ongoing flooding crisis. As I spoke to people in the EOC, a team of firemen were staging a water rescue of a family from a submerging trailer along Pike Hill Road in McDonough. The Canasawacta Creek and Chenango Rivers were also past flood stage and rising. I was warned about traveling in the areas of Plymouth, Pharsalia and McDonough, where many roads were washed out, covered in water or blocked by debris.

I returned to the office and found my editor Jeff Genung possessing an immediate need for information. The scale of the weather event had become clear and whatever articles Melissa and I had planned on writing that morning became irrelevant.

I was ordered to hit the road by 7:45 a.m. to gather pictures, confirm damage and possibly get some reaction/on the scene quotes before “returning to base,” as Jeff says, within an hour. Meanwhile Melissa took my notes from the EOC, complied the information we had so far and made several phone calls to local officials before piecing together a story.

My original goal when I left the office was to reach the in-progress water rescue in McDonough. It never happened. The farther I traveled down State Highway 23, the more apparent the situation became. The Canasawacta was violent and flowing at a concerning height you rarely see. As I passed Foster Park, I could see it had completely swallowed the area and I noticed large currents, several feet deep, bashing against a yellow playground slide.

As I entered Plymouth, I was forced to drive through parts of the road partially cover by water. At some points the route was closed to just a single lane of traffic and my travel was stifled.