We’ve had some really good rainstorms this week, including one yesterday afternoon that promised to scare the tails off Andy and Dougy, who hang close to me during storms. Not that they are frightened and edgy, mind you. Just aware and prepared to “hit the dirt” if there are any incoming bolts of lightning. 🙂
Though the video quality of this is poor, the audio is the thing. It was a constant rumble for the duration, with frequent bolts of lightning lighting the sky. That’s why it’s stupid to stand by an aluminum door to make a video of it! 🙁 Of course, here in Western Nebraska and other places where rain is an infrequent event (14 inches or so of precipitation a year is typical, 36cm), we are notorious for doing just that!
Give us a tornado, though, the whole neighborhood is standing outside with video and still cameras documenting the twister coming straight at us. Ha! Otherwise, how do you think those terrifying videos of tornadoes you see on television come about? (Could be why the High Plains is sparsely populated. Call it the “Dorothy lands in Oz” effect.) 😉
Oh man that is wet. We get rain like that in the winter that leaves the apt complex parking lot almost underwater.
Stay dry.
We had one the night before last that left 1.5-three inches of rain and drifts of hail that hadn’t melted by noon the morning after, even though it got fairly hot.
HAVE YOU GOT AN UNDERGROUND SHELTER IF A TWISTER COMES?
NO, I DON’T. I DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, THOUGH.
I wish that was our rainy season – I have a monsoon going at the moment! But it will stop just as quickly as it started.
I found a playmate for Dougie and Andy > Fluff Ball
http://icediamondeyeddragon.wordpress.com/
Yes, that is Ali Cat! She’s a beauty, eh!? Our rain yielded between .5 and .7 inches, according to different sources in different parts of the area. The high winds knocked the top off a large pine tree on the other side of town, and the people in that area went without power for a few minutes. On my side of town, we had some small hail, but north of here, in the wheat-growing part of the county that always seems to get a bad hailstorm before the wheat can ripen and be harvested, the hail was golf ball size at least, and caused a bit of damage. Personally, I like slow, fluffy snow and slow drizzly rain. I’ve been caught on the highway just across the border into Nebraska from Douglas, Wyoming, in a thunderstorm so severe, everyone had to pull off the road and wait it out because it turned so dark and the rain was so heavy the windshield wipers didn’t make a dent in it. Lots of scary lightning, but no hail in that very windy storm, and we were treated to a magnificent and very intense double rainbow that lasted foe several minutes afterwards. I don’t need that much excitement! Good or bad.
Then you know what we get sometimes, but I am not trading our hurricanes for your tornadoes!! At least we know weeks in advance if a hurricane might be coming…tornadoes? How many minutes notices do you get?
Not that much. We have alerts to preconditions that might spawn tornadoes (these can be days ahead), watches (usually during circumstances where a tornado could form any time or place in the affected area), and warnings (where a tornado has been spotted touching down in the area or a tornado is seen coming off a cloud). Radio and television systems for alerting people are effective and usually give people a fair amount of time to prepare. The problem, though, is a tornado came pop out of anywhere at any time when conditions are right, so you might be right there instead of in a safe location three, four miles away with plenty of time to track and react to it. Some are speedier than others; others dwell over a spot, which is similar to hurricanes, only over a narrower plath.
I’ve seen them, been near them, but never in one. Remember Harry Truman, the old guy with the lodge on Mt. St. Helens in Washington state? He figured if the mountain blew, he’d be gone in a flash, so don’t worry about it. In the meantime, he was going to enjoy where he was. Of course, he was gone in one horrific moment when the volcano blew. I’m a bit like that with tornadoes. I’ve hidden in the basement many times in the past, no tornado came close by.