A quiet day. Laundry backed up for weeks—got done. I don’t know if our pond sunshield is working but it’s no worse. We woke up last night to thunder and lightning, unusual for Spokane, but when you have a day of 99 degree heat and 68% humidity (I don’t even know how you get it that way except under a bell jar in sunlight) and then a forecast 85 degrees for the day following—doh! I don’t know how the weather bureau both national and local missed that one, but this former Oklahoman knows how to add those numbers. Crash-boom, and we ran for the power plugs.
Got a pretty nice rain, too: better than dry lightning, which only starts fires.
Lynn spent yesterday on painkillers: dentistry. So much fun.
We spent yesterday dragging hose about to protect our plants. And Jane spent an hour stitching up our sunshield.
Besides that, just work, work, work.
We haven’t seen OSG. We believe she was kidnapped by her job and may need rescue…
I don’t think I ever sleep better than during a good storm. A relief for the nerves, knowing the only loud boom is an bolt of energy putting nitrogen back where it needs to be. Not so much fun with recent dental work. Once lost a front tooth to a baseball bat. Not fun at all.
Since reading your blog, I have been inspired to try to write some very short stuff. Thanks for the inspiration.
No rescue needed: I’ve been slaying financial dragons all day. A pox upon the house of Dell computers & Chase Bank — Chase is now fired and Dell is next in line. The tick-tick-ticking you hear is the time bomb I’ve set for Dell. One relishes the moment when OSGuy returns home tonight.
You, Carolyn & Jane, will get to hear the Lurid Details in person. One promises you will not be disappointed. Anyone else who may be interested can hear me rant later, via Live Journal & “Tarmin Village”.
“off topic” OSG is there something wrong with Shejidan. Can not log on. My IE can not connect.
It seems to be fine to me, Aelith.
Thanks, see ya when I see ya. 🙁
I remember the last major thunderstorm I was in – I was working in a highrise in Downtown Seattle and was spooked at how close the lightning was and my relation to Terra Firma (on the 18th floor). It was beautiful and frightening all at once.
I can’t wait to hear the details, OSG!
Since when was Bren *not* in trouble? And would we care to read about a life that is calm and boring? It’s your *job* to get him in and (out?) of trouble, each incident more hair-raising than the last! Being one of your characters is not an easy task. Besides, Bren is up to it: he’s had so much experience… 😉
This it totally irrelevant, but where does one get those little emoticons?
OSG I can sympathize with you on the Chase issue, but they’ve been pretty well behaved for me — BofA is on the top of my best dead list and has been since this spring. Shylocks and shysters seem to run arm and arm, gleefully chortling. Can imperious computer wranglers be for removed?
to get the wink, type (together) ; and ) And to get the laughter, type : lol : closed up together.
ryanrick, I’ve been meaning to ask: what is the name of the peak behind you? It bears a resemblance to Nepal’s Ama Dablam, but I’m quite certain it isn’t. Could it be Mt. Chephren, in the Canadian Rockies?
Glorious, isn’t it? It Mount Assiniboine, in a wilderness area not too far from Banff, but on the other side of the Continental Divide in BC. You either hike about 15 miles with a 4000 foot relief or you take a helicopter. We took the helicopter! BTW, I’m Ryan and he’s Rick.
Oooh, Lurid Details! Don’t forget, we want the Lurid Details, too!
I’ve done serious time in Oklahoma, and those weather conditions sound altogether too familiar…. And that’s why I never sleep worse than when there’s a “good” storm.
(Elsewhere, in Another Place, I’ve detailed the Target-Seeking-Flaming-Tornados nightmares that these conditions provoke. shudder)
I was in Oklahoma City for the F5, and when we went driving to somewhere we really needed to get to (I forget) that night, all the highway exits near Tinker were closed off with flashing red lights. Unforgettable sightr. Likewise unforgettable, watching one of the tornadoes that day (F3) with its supercell shining electric blue edges in the sunlight, and the thing ‘spun up,’ as it collapsed: streamers of cloud miles wide (overhead) suddenly contracted, like timelapse photography, as fast as you can imagine it happening, like a skater going into a spin, and then the thing was roaring away north of us…quite a show. And meanwhile we were following that F5 that had started down by Chickasha: we were on a direct line for it if it had gone due north, but they often veer, and this one did, taking out a part of Moore OK, not to mention Bridgeport, where it even ripped grass out of the ground. Terrible, terrible storm. Our solution if that thing came at us was to get into the lake, into the boat slip and hope for the best. Being in a structure was not going to help you much in that one. One guy rode it out in a manhole. Many people who relied on bathtubs and closets were in dire trouble and some were killed. It was a strange day; that one beautiful sight, and then all that mayhem.
Strange how geography changes your perception. I often forget you Midwesterners are a different breed, and have to twitch to environmental dangers east-coasters often don’t. Anything short of a hurricane was always great fun for me. Funny that as soon as I start typing, the thunder starts rolling. I have seen a few funnel clouds before, but never had to face an honest-to-God, head for the cellar storm. Never a bad hurricane. Did just miss a couple terrible floods in West Virginia. Had to high tail it out of those camp grounds awful fast. It was terrible to see what that water could do to a holler, and all those home built along the bottom.
Oh, yeah. I had to sandbag the lakeside Oklahoma City house: that was an adventure: I’m the lowest house on the lake but one, the guy with the key to the floodgate on the dam was out of town, the lake upstream from us had to release or see a dam breach, and that left us—
I called around looking for sandbags and found some; but when I called the one of the sand pits, they were talking to me and then yelled: “Water’s rising! Get out of here!” to someone in the building. They hung up and I called the next sandpit company and got some sand. I was handing out bags and sand to any neighbors that wanted them…you lay down garbage bags in front of your doors, then sandbag over those. We didn’t expect deep, but we didn’t want mud on the carpets. The flood stopped 10″ from my door. But it got the Ac unit next door.
UP here, tornados are a ho-hum, because they’re only F1 and 2. But I can still ‘feel’ them when they’re in the offing, even up here. YOu hone those senses living in the great plains—the pressure, the humidity, the character of the weather you’ve got and the knowledge of a front rolling in.
It is interesting how geography shapes weather and expectations. I grew up in the midwest with the cloudbursts and thunderstorms, and then moved out to the West Coast, first in the SF Bay area, where thunderstorms are a once-in-a-decade event, and then to southern California, where they seem to be as rare, but there is the infamous Santa Ana winds. Those took some getting used to, for this midwestern girl. Imagine the wind that blows when a front is moving in, the one that is generally followed by lots of rain and often thunder. And then picture that wind blowing for hours… all night, generally. I’d keep getting tenser and tenser, waiting for the rain. Which, of course, never comes, since that wind is coming down off a desert and sucking the moisture out of everything in its path.
And when I moved back to Texas briefly, one of my co-workers was a California-born transplant. He told me once that his first thunderstorm in Texas scared him to death. He had an apartment on the top floor of his building, and the thunder was so close and strong that it was shaking the building, and since it woke him up, his first thought was “earthquake”. He said it took him a while to get over that instinctive response.
My experience has been kinda opposite that; raised in SoCal (Oceanside), moved to OK in my teens. Earthquakes and Santa Anas were quite normal, but nothing prepared me for tornados.
Ice storms came as a nasty shock, too.
Yes, philosopher77, I find it interesting, too. Surprisingly (to me), instincts aren’t inevitably associated with experience. I grew up in Southern California, then spent two years at college in Santa Fe, and knew what the “snow” smell in the air was, before I’d experienced it. It woke me at 2 am, and I loved it.
I’ve never been in a big-style storm such as you all have described, but I’ve always been sensitive to ozone in the air, and when rain is imminent. I love thunderstorms, but admittedly have only experienced those rare ones in So. CA, and the big ones in New Mexico that come sweeping up toward Santa Fe from Albuquerque, that you could watch all the way up the slope from the Sandias range. Whew! Impressive. We watched them from the roof – reckless.
So, I feel for all those caught in storms, like Jago on the rooftop.
Oh, CJ, I was living in Moore, OK, when that nasty tornado came through! I was actually in its direct path in the house I was renting, but fled before it hit. (I grew up in Oklahoma and knew a bad storm when I saw one, so avoided it in time!) It was several days before I could return home because the power was out. I had several friends lose their homes, and even worse, their horses. It was tragic that the authorities kept everyone away for a couple of days, as some of the horses might have been saved if they were treated in time. But I do understand that those in charge were trying to keep order and make sure everyone (humans) stayed safe. Very tragic.
I swear that my hair stands on end just remembering how the air feels when those Oklahoma tornadoes roll in. In Arizona, we have some interesting storms, but NOTHING like those “back home.” <> I lived in Chickasha for many years as a child, and saw my share of tornadoes. Ugh, going outside now to look at the stars and enjoy the hot, calm weather!
My thorough sympathies. Closest I ever came to being hit, I was living on North McKinley, last house on the left, before wheat fields. I woke to a nasty feeling, headed for the radio (surest prognosticator) and heard “There goes the gas station! I’m getting out of here!”
I ran to the back patio door to look, and saw pops of light, the tornado tearing up the electric lines between me and it.
I started throwing blankets and pillows into the hall closet and rounding up the cats.
I ran back to look at the back patio door and saw an eerie green glow lighting the rain slanting sharply to the left.
I ran immediately to the front window and saw the same glow on rain slanting sharply opposite.
Yep, I was directly under the funnel.
I added two and two and ran for the pillows and mattresses in the hall as the pressure change hit. I thought my eardrums were going to burst. I heard nails groan as the roof tried to come off.
They say don’t open windows, it makes no difference. But I had opened everything, back, front, you name it.
We came that close. And the sign for a Chinese restaurant 30 blocks away was in the field north of us, and checks from Wichita Falls TX were raining down into our wheat field in north OKC.
I got out unscathed. But that pressure-sensation, as if my eardrums were about to burst, was something I’ve not heard reported by other witnesses.
Oooh, I didn’t get the ear drum pressure from that tornado, because I fled before it hit, but I have experienced that weird head pressure from other tornadoes. I hope I never feel it again!
The hair on the back of my neck is standing up just reading your description of the storm you were in! I swear, unless a person has experienced that ear drum sensation, they can read about it all day long, but never really understand what it feels like (no matter how well you describe it).
Taking a deep breath, I am very happy that I am no longer subjected to those horrible, scary twisters. We do have our eyebrow raising storms here in Arizona, but they are actually entertaining and not frightening. 🙂
1) Lightning storm at 10,000 feet, high on Mt. Rainier. OSGuy & I knew we were in huge trouble when St. Elmo’s Fire lit up the edges of a team member’s snowboard, strapped to his backpack. (In case anyone wonders, St. E’s Fire audibly buzzes, & sounds like a leaking fuel cannister.) http://www.summitpost.org/mountain/rock/150291/mount-rainier.html
Our rope team of 4 crouched on our packs for insulation as bolts hit the rocky ridges 100 feet away. The thunder was beyond deafening, downright painful, even with my fingers jammed into my ears. The storm’s excruciating brightness & sound I can compare only to a nuclear war. Then there was the hail. We endured this for a full 30 minutes: it is a miracle we survived unscathed. Comparing notes the next day, it turned out all 4 of us made deals with God.
2) Lost Arrow Spire, Yosemite. Remember “Cliffhanger” w/ Sylvester Stallone, & the girl who fell while suspended from ropes? That’s a Tyrolean traverse, and is part of the Lost Arrow’s appeal & thrill. http://www.summitpost.org/mountain/rock/151257/lost-arrow-spire.html
Following a successful climb, OSGuy & I made our respective Tyroleans off the Arrow’s summit during, yes, of course — a lightning storm. I have indelible memories of hanging from the ropes in torrential rain, 7700 feet above the Valley floor, looking back at OSGuy crouched on the Lost Arrow’s tiny summit, lightning flashing all around. I’m not so sure how we survived that one either.
Additional Shake-Fest accounts available upon request; sadly, I have no shortage. And people wonder where writers get their ideas….
Did someone give Bren the ancient curse, “May you live in interesting times!” because he certainly does.
I had been in those areas that were devastated by the F5. My late brother was stationed at Tinker, we played golf on their course, so I got a chance to look around a bit. Yes, I chase that little white ball occasionally, but I don’t bet on it. Greens fees are high enough.
My sister-in-law said that the tornado came with 1/4 mile of their house, which means it went between her and Tinker’s main gate. They were out of power for a l-o-n-g time.
As for “only” F1 & F2 tornados, granted they don’t quite equal the fury of an F5, but even so, they cause enough death and destruction. I know you weren’t “discounting” them, CJ, nobody who experiences violent weather would do that. I don’t recall the strength of the Greensburg tornado, but it was either EF3 or EF4, but that might be in error, too. I’m the county coordinator for our amateur radio SKYWARN system, we work through our Emergency Management Agency, and I have spotters around the county who send me reports via amateur radio, and then I relay those to the regional controller, who then relays them to the NWS station in Wilmington, OH. The time differential from the spotting of a tornado or funnel cloud to the time the NWS receives the report is less than 1 minute. We try to get that information out as quickly as possible to save as many lives as we can.
We just had a series of straight-line winds that knocked over billboards, downed some tree limbs, and 3/4″ hail the other night. I’m glad that nothing else happened, and that there were no injuries in our area. I do feel badly for the folks in Indiana, though, they really got hit hard.
It’s been raining here almost every night since that storm system went through. The cats don’t seem to mind it, even though I have to close windows, I leave open the ones that don’t appear to be inlets for the rain, so we still get the nice breeze, and the sounds of the rain falling and of course the thunder. I used to panic at the sight of lightning, but now, I like to watch as Mother Nature puts on her own fireworks show. I still respect it, and don’t put myself in harms way, but watching out a window makes it much better, although not much safer.
Oh, no, no, no, I don’t discount them. They’ll ruin your day and they fling stuff, for sure. If told an F1 was headed for my block I’d take alarm and take cover, no question. But they’re flighty, don’t plow along county after county. Greensburg I think was rated F5: huge footprint, major destruction, long run, possibly also secondary funnels. The Moore F5 when it hit Bridgeport subdivision even took the grass out of the lawns: from the air some stretches looked like a giant mudflat dotted with house slabs, not even a stick of wood left, and there was some talk it might exceed F5 category…but I don’t think anybody was in a position to calculate the windspeed during the Bridgeport event, just by the time it was over toward Moore. Moore looked a lot more like Greensburg: building timbers scattered like jackstraws, walls flattened. Both really terrible disasters.
I wrote a pretty hot letter to CNN after they decried all storm chasers as thrill-seeking idiots, and I may not have been the only one, since they backed off that attitude. Thank goodness for the spotters.
I’ve been very lucky up here in Tulsa. I well remember the one that flattened Moore (our vet’s mother lost everything in it). By the time it had come up the turnpike it had lost a small amount of its power and didn’t touch down over the city.
For those of you who don’t know Oklahoma, Tulsa is about 120 miles northeast up the pike from Oklahoma City. Generally our tornados follow the pike all the way up to Joplin in Missouri.
And then, after they’ve stopped at Joplin, they just continue up I44 to Springfield.
Whatever did the weather do before we gave them this handy-dandy highway system to steer by?
My spotters are asked not to “chase” the storms, because they are vulnerable, they are also changing their locations and I can’t keep up with all of the changes and still make my reports to the regional director. I applaud the hot letter to CNN, since professional storm chasers are researchers, usually having degrees in atmospheric sciences, e.g., the crews on “Storm Chasers”. I know Dr. Reed Timmer is in it for money by selling his videos to news organizations and possibly researchers. I still find it hilarious in a macabre sense when he and his crew were almost caught in a tornado and you could hear him screaming on the video, “Back up! Back up!….” We as SKYWARN spotters do not do that, and I stress to my people that they must remain safe, even if that means they can no longer make reports.
Tulrose, my late brother lived on S. Garrett Rd in the 4400 block, if I recall correctly. I know Tulsa isn’t the average country town, but just mentioned it as a sidelight.
JoeK: Probably South Garnett – about 3 miles north east of me by road.
And you probably are aware of the existence of Collinsville, the little garden spot where I spent my high school years, and laid eyes on my first tornado, ripping through the fields at a distance of two miles. Unforgetable!
Oh yes. We have a close friend who grew up in Collinsville. Been there lots of times. It’s getting bigger particularly since Owasso is now becoming too expensive for some people. The highway is now mostly 4 lane up to there and 6 lane from the I-44 intersection south. I commuted up that road for years and stopped at the back end of the airport where I worked at the maintenance base and computer centre. Computers all live underground there, for obvious reasons.