Keel

keel
verb, intransitive. To keel over, of a boat or ship. To turn over on its side. To capsize. Of a person or thing, to fall over, to collapse.

The last thing one would expect to see in the woods is a massive, healthy hickory tree that had snapped off near the ground, then keeled over. It must have been eighteen inches thick. Hickory is tough wood. That’s why tool handles are made of it. Once seasoned, it’s impossible to drive a nail into it.

It’s not quite that tough while it’s still alive, but it’s not weak, either. Since the damage occurred during a spring storm, in tornado season, the conclusion is that a tornado touched down briefly at that tree’s location, did its work in a second or two, then retracted its funnel and moved on. The sound of that trunk breaking must have been nearly deafening, but no one was in the woods during that storm--no one but birds and animals.

The downed tree is a testament to the power of those storms. One lives through countless thunderstorms in a lifetime; numerous incidents of high wind. But not even hurricane winds reach the speed of winds in a large tornado. Such force is almost unimaginable. Whatever it touches, it breaks.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.