My Birthday Present: A TORNADO
May. 15th, 2007 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabular_rasaI got a tornado for my birthday.
The weather was supposed to be isolated/strong storms in the late afternoon, and, sure, it was kind of crazy all day. It was definitely hot, but not particularly humid, but we kept having little swells of storms that would seize up out of nowhere (and then watching them appears and disappear out of nothing on the Weather Channel radar was amusing, too, lol . . . ), rain themselves crazy for a few minutes, and then disappear without a trace save the wet concrete barely cooled off by the shower so that all was mist.
(Jessica and I met at the library-- the semi-sort-of midpoint between our two houses, and just as we were preparing to leave, one of these started, and we called home to get my mom-- off work for the day-- to pick us up. Just as she arrived, for instance, the rain stopped . . . )
Then, right about dinnertime/the time Dad gets off of work, it gets really scary. It just goes deathly dark, and the wind picks up. Mom and I shut the curtains, and I turn on the Weather Channel to read a slew of Warnings and Watches for our county and the counties surrounding us: Severe Thunderstorm Watch, Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Tornado Watch, Tornado Warning, Flash Flood Watch, Flash Flood Warning. Dad calls home to advise us not to go out in the storm and tell us that he's going to be late, as the stuff sweeping through downtown is just to scary to go out and drive in. Tory asks whether she should continue to pursue making dinner, and Mom advises her to do so, as we have Neil's band concert at 7:00 and, depending on how fast everything moves through, we may still have to make it, lol . . . Neil takes a very quick shower, and I take my valuable stuff down to the basement as per my paranoid tradition during tornado-vigils.
There's two main spots of worry: the county to our west, and the county to our north (where the lake house is)-- they had the actual tornadoes. The tornado sirens never went off for us, because there were never any tornadoes in our county, though our radar spot on the map was dark red-- and even purple at times-- and we definitely a "Severe Thunderstorm Warning" that panned out as a crazy-ass storm, lol . . .
However, the lake may have been less lucky. Now, as I am not really good at finding our relatively-isolated lake in terms of where it is located within the county north of us, it crossed my mind to worry about the lake house being at the center of the storm, but I had no evidence or proof. However, the newscasters said at one point that the center of rotation for the storm was right over "what must be Williamsville or Motville"-- Williamsville being the tiny little grouping of houses just up the hill from our lake house, where Tom's Garage is; we bike up there all the time, and it's definitely less than a mile away. Mom called at this point to check to see if the power was still on up there; the answering machine picked up, so it was-- at least at that point. I think we're relatively safe, as we are down a hill, so I'm not too worried. Luckily, we're not going up there for a few days, until this weekend, probably, so hopefully it won't be a huge problem, but I wouldn't want to drive up there right way, just in case there's a lot of downed debris, damage, etc . . . I'm glad we weren't up there at the time, either.
The storm calmed down, and gradually all the warnings drifted eastward (I think Detroit has a more tired version of our storm, now, lol . . . ). We ate our dinner, had my birthday cake, and made it to Neil's concert. Woot
In other news, lots of people called, commented on my lj, or wrote on my Facebook wall with birthday wishes. I feel so loved; yea!
The weather was supposed to be isolated/strong storms in the late afternoon, and, sure, it was kind of crazy all day. It was definitely hot, but not particularly humid, but we kept having little swells of storms that would seize up out of nowhere (and then watching them appears and disappear out of nothing on the Weather Channel radar was amusing, too, lol . . . ), rain themselves crazy for a few minutes, and then disappear without a trace save the wet concrete barely cooled off by the shower so that all was mist.
(Jessica and I met at the library-- the semi-sort-of midpoint between our two houses, and just as we were preparing to leave, one of these started, and we called home to get my mom-- off work for the day-- to pick us up. Just as she arrived, for instance, the rain stopped . . . )
Then, right about dinnertime/the time Dad gets off of work, it gets really scary. It just goes deathly dark, and the wind picks up. Mom and I shut the curtains, and I turn on the Weather Channel to read a slew of Warnings and Watches for our county and the counties surrounding us: Severe Thunderstorm Watch, Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Tornado Watch, Tornado Warning, Flash Flood Watch, Flash Flood Warning. Dad calls home to advise us not to go out in the storm and tell us that he's going to be late, as the stuff sweeping through downtown is just to scary to go out and drive in. Tory asks whether she should continue to pursue making dinner, and Mom advises her to do so, as we have Neil's band concert at 7:00 and, depending on how fast everything moves through, we may still have to make it, lol . . . Neil takes a very quick shower, and I take my valuable stuff down to the basement as per my paranoid tradition during tornado-vigils.
There's two main spots of worry: the county to our west, and the county to our north (where the lake house is)-- they had the actual tornadoes. The tornado sirens never went off for us, because there were never any tornadoes in our county, though our radar spot on the map was dark red-- and even purple at times-- and we definitely a "Severe Thunderstorm Warning" that panned out as a crazy-ass storm, lol . . .
However, the lake may have been less lucky. Now, as I am not really good at finding our relatively-isolated lake in terms of where it is located within the county north of us, it crossed my mind to worry about the lake house being at the center of the storm, but I had no evidence or proof. However, the newscasters said at one point that the center of rotation for the storm was right over "what must be Williamsville or Motville"-- Williamsville being the tiny little grouping of houses just up the hill from our lake house, where Tom's Garage is; we bike up there all the time, and it's definitely less than a mile away. Mom called at this point to check to see if the power was still on up there; the answering machine picked up, so it was-- at least at that point. I think we're relatively safe, as we are down a hill, so I'm not too worried. Luckily, we're not going up there for a few days, until this weekend, probably, so hopefully it won't be a huge problem, but I wouldn't want to drive up there right way, just in case there's a lot of downed debris, damage, etc . . . I'm glad we weren't up there at the time, either.
The storm calmed down, and gradually all the warnings drifted eastward (I think Detroit has a more tired version of our storm, now, lol . . . ). We ate our dinner, had my birthday cake, and made it to Neil's concert. Woot
In other news, lots of people called, commented on my lj, or wrote on my Facebook wall with birthday wishes. I feel so loved; yea!
