I knew Old Man Charlie from the days of my youth on Poor Mountain. That old man mostly kept to himself, but when I’d see him walking around on the mountain, he’d talk my ear off. Charlie told a lot of stories, but the ones that always got him worked up the most were the stories of what he called “dem saclones.” Charlie spent a lot of time walking the ridge of Poor Mountain, just to pass the time, but I always liked to ask him about dem saclones.
From what the old man told me, I gathered that he had been experiencing some kind of ultra-rare meteorological phenomenon that may be unique to Poor Mountain. It’s hard for me to go into any detail, but Charlie described clouds quickly forming very close to the ground, twisting like a cyclone. Within the course of a few minutes, an extremely small area would be pelted with up to quarter-sized hail. Sometimes the hail would be smaller, and the affected area could be as large as a house or as small as a frisbee.
Honestly, I never believed that old man. After he died, I wondered a little about Charlie’s stories and eventually researched some information on the internet. I learned that it’s possible “dem saclones” were also called Microstorms. No one on the internet seemed to have seen these vicious kind of tornadic hail Microstorms, and I tried contacting a few meteorologists. None of them seemed to believe the stories from Charlie, and just said that Microstorms were not proven science. However, Poor Mountain surely has great importance as a possible meteorological oddity.
Poor Mountain is located in Roanoke, Virginia, and is currently under threat of industrial development for wind power. Help us, Anonymous. Hack our government into submission for Old Man Charlie and his crazy cyclones. They’re probably real, and when those wind turbines go up, the Microstorms may disappear forever. Have you ever seen what happens when a wind turbine gets pelted with an intense cyclone full of quarter-size hail? Mayhem. Pure mayhem is coming to Poor Mountain if this wind farm is approved. STOP THEM NOW.
