Hopefully this post will go through!
Well, today was the 11th anniversary of the Jarrell, TX tornado! My mom and I walked out of Wal-Mart and saw a huge black cloud coming from the northeast. The rest is history! ;)
Today's forecast didn't look too promising. I was too busy to think much about it, but I did think that it would be funny if we had a storm today in the middle of this heat!
Around 6pm, my mom and I came out of Costco, and I half expected to see dark clouds. Ha ha! I didn't see any there, but as we got onto the elevated roads to come home, the northeastern sky looked "funny." Not stormy, just strange. By the time we got home, it was obvious something was happening, but we still didn't know what! A huge gust front blew through, lowering the temperature nearly 20 degrees in the span of about 5 minutes! Now that was a welcome feeling, since it had been 97 degrees! We got home, and my dad said, oh yes, there were some storms moving in.
I checked the radar. Yes, there were storms moving this way! From the northeast! Thankfully they were very benign rain showers instead of supercell thunderstorms with an F5 tornado inside!
God does have a sense of humor. ;)
Tonight we have a giant line of thunderstorms moving this way from the TX panhandle. I've seen this type of complex hold together long enough to give our area some decent rainfall in the past, so I am pretty optimistic about these! Our garden would enjoy a break from the hose water we've been feeding it lately.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Weather update
I haven't posted because nothing has happened with the weather! It's been very quiet since the big storms 1.5 weeks ago. We're getting into a summer time weather pattern now, which means very little rain, plenty of humidity and HOT temperatures! The only chance of rain we have is if something forms in the heat of the day from gulf moisture.
It's always exciting when something unexpected pops up, but I'm not getting my hopes up! I'll have to go against my bad habit of sleeping late and start getting up at sunrise to do yard work. Otherwise I mow for 10 minutes and feel like I've been run through a wringer!
This is the first Memorial day in several years that looks like it's going to be dry! I sure hope this summer doesn't bring drought conditions. That's always so depressing!
It's always exciting when something unexpected pops up, but I'm not getting my hopes up! I'll have to go against my bad habit of sleeping late and start getting up at sunrise to do yard work. Otherwise I mow for 10 minutes and feel like I've been run through a wringer!
This is the first Memorial day in several years that looks like it's going to be dry! I sure hope this summer doesn't bring drought conditions. That's always so depressing!
Sunday, May 18, 2008
My version of Storm Stories. ;)
I don't think I ever wrote about what happened here as the storms passed over.
Wednesday evening, there was a chance of storms, but when we left the house at 5pm, there wasn't anything on the radar that I noticed. Choir practice lasted until shortly after 8:30pm, and we began our drive back home. I noticed occasional flashes of lightning in the northwest, but didn't worry too much about it. As I drove home, I turned on the XM emergency alert channel on the radio to see if there were any warnings. After listening to them for 5 minutes, all I learned was that there were "tornado watches for the southern plains." Well, that's not too helpful, really.
In the meantime as we drove towards home, the lightning became brighter and closer every minute! It also began to flash constantly, with only a few seconds break between flashes. I mentioned to my mom that I didn't like seeing increasing lightning in a storm because often tornadic storms will do that right before producing a tornado! We still didn't worry too much because after all, the marvelous technology of XM radio hadn't said there were any warnings. :)
When we got home, I immediately pulled the car into the garage. By this time, the lightning was pretty scary because it was directly overhead and constant! I ran inside and looked at the radar, while my mom turned on the TV. She called out that there was a tornado warning, and at that moment I saw the hook echo on the huge storm. YIKES! I turned off the computer immediately and we began cleaning out the coat closet for shelter. (If you haven't seen it, our coat closet is about 3 feet by 4 feet. Not much space for 3 people! But it's the only interior room in our house.)
The TV was lit up with warnings on the maps, and the weather men were excitedly talking about how bad this situation was. I got out my camera and took a video of the TV screen and the giant hook-echo'd storm that was coming straight for us. (with at least 2 confirmed funnel clouds!) Right about 9:42pm on my video, the lights went out!
So here we were, sitting in the pitch black house, with a hook echo coming straight for us. I stupidly hadn't thought of it before when we had lights, but now that we were in the dark about everything, (literally!) I sent my friend a text and asked her to pray along with us. The rain started, and then a few pieces of hail started falling. They were marble-sized mostly, but we had a few loud bumps on the roof that may have been really big pieces. I wasn't about to go outside and see! We waited and waited for a blast of wind after the hail, but it never came. As we listened to a TV station on the radio, we figured that the hook echo passed less than 2 miles from our house. But there was no wind! No huge hail to break our windows! We were so thankful to God for sparing us this time, and after seeing all the terrible tree and window damage in Austin, we were even more thankful!
So that's why I don't have exciting pictures from here at home. We didn't have anything "exciting" enough to photograph!
Thanks for reading! :)
Wednesday evening, there was a chance of storms, but when we left the house at 5pm, there wasn't anything on the radar that I noticed. Choir practice lasted until shortly after 8:30pm, and we began our drive back home. I noticed occasional flashes of lightning in the northwest, but didn't worry too much about it. As I drove home, I turned on the XM emergency alert channel on the radio to see if there were any warnings. After listening to them for 5 minutes, all I learned was that there were "tornado watches for the southern plains." Well, that's not too helpful, really.
In the meantime as we drove towards home, the lightning became brighter and closer every minute! It also began to flash constantly, with only a few seconds break between flashes. I mentioned to my mom that I didn't like seeing increasing lightning in a storm because often tornadic storms will do that right before producing a tornado! We still didn't worry too much because after all, the marvelous technology of XM radio hadn't said there were any warnings. :)
When we got home, I immediately pulled the car into the garage. By this time, the lightning was pretty scary because it was directly overhead and constant! I ran inside and looked at the radar, while my mom turned on the TV. She called out that there was a tornado warning, and at that moment I saw the hook echo on the huge storm. YIKES! I turned off the computer immediately and we began cleaning out the coat closet for shelter. (If you haven't seen it, our coat closet is about 3 feet by 4 feet. Not much space for 3 people! But it's the only interior room in our house.)
The TV was lit up with warnings on the maps, and the weather men were excitedly talking about how bad this situation was. I got out my camera and took a video of the TV screen and the giant hook-echo'd storm that was coming straight for us. (with at least 2 confirmed funnel clouds!) Right about 9:42pm on my video, the lights went out!
So here we were, sitting in the pitch black house, with a hook echo coming straight for us. I stupidly hadn't thought of it before when we had lights, but now that we were in the dark about everything, (literally!) I sent my friend a text and asked her to pray along with us. The rain started, and then a few pieces of hail started falling. They were marble-sized mostly, but we had a few loud bumps on the roof that may have been really big pieces. I wasn't about to go outside and see! We waited and waited for a blast of wind after the hail, but it never came. As we listened to a TV station on the radio, we figured that the hook echo passed less than 2 miles from our house. But there was no wind! No huge hail to break our windows! We were so thankful to God for sparing us this time, and after seeing all the terrible tree and window damage in Austin, we were even more thankful!
So that's why I don't have exciting pictures from here at home. We didn't have anything "exciting" enough to photograph!
Thanks for reading! :)
Friday, May 16, 2008
May 14th-15th, 2008 Storm Pictures!
Well, it looks like Blogger isn't going to cooperate with me loading my pictures into this post, so you'll have to go here to check them out. Sorry for the inconvenience! The album has the pictures that got posted in the body of the other post, too.
May 14th-15th, 2008 Cont'd
Yet another view of the carpet of leaves at the office.
This is a skylight in the building we are using for church services. Notice all the cracks where the hail blasted it?
The entire skylight is covered in cracks!
Another view. I'm just hoping all that glass doesn't fall ON someone! Most of the westward-facing windows on the building were broken, too. Overall, at least 100 windows were broken here!In downtown Austin, one builder reported one of his half-finished buildings had 1,800 windows broken by the hail. OUCH!
I have some videos to post too, but those will come a little later. Does anyone know what kind of software I'd need to go through digital video frame by frame? I took a couple lightning videos and would love to catch a few frames out of those!
Our power went out at approximately 9:45pm and stayed off until around 6am Thursday morning.
Now we'll see if this posts like it's supposed to.....
Thursday, May 15, 2008
May 14th-15th, 2008
Wow!
I have a long post to make when we get home later this afternoon. We had some real storms! I have pictures and video, too!
The short version: We had a hook echo (with confirmed funnel cloud) pass literally within about 2 miles of our house. These storms had constant lightning (very common with tornadic storms) and our power was out for 9 hours!
More later!
I have a long post to make when we get home later this afternoon. We had some real storms! I have pictures and video, too!
The short version: We had a hook echo (with confirmed funnel cloud) pass literally within about 2 miles of our house. These storms had constant lightning (very common with tornadic storms) and our power was out for 9 hours!
More later!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
