|
Severe Weather Season is upon us...
Ahhhhhh...Springtime in Texas. The Texas Bluebonnets & Indian Paints are beginning to blossom...the trees are budding...there's a warmth to the air...the birds are singing...we listen for the wail of tornado sirens...
WELCOME TO SEVERE WEATHER SEASON, BABY!!!
Texas weather. One thing Texans like to talk about, it's the weather. You don't like it? Stick around, wait five minutes...it'll change. One thing about the weather here, it is NEVER dull or boring.
Even wrote a poem about it...
_______________________________________________________________
TEXAS WEATHER
we cain't predict
th' weather in
Texas...it is
too hot...too cold...
too stormy...too
humid...or too
(way too) WINDY!!!
one week it is
below freezing...
th' next week we're
sure we're gonna
MELT!!!! heck, we don't
need to wait one
hour* to the next!
can happin one
minnit to th'
next...then we all
wonder why we
all git sick...yep.
blame it all on
Texas weather!!!
(*--prounounced, "ARE" to keep with the rhythm of the poem...that's Texan!)
_______________________________________________________________
Texas seems to be the meetin' place for all kinds of weather systems, &, like at a family reunion, some of them don't get along...
Cold, Canadian air rushes in from the North. Cool, drier air flows in from the Rocky Mountains to the West. The Gulf of Mexico sends her best, moisture laden air up from the South. Winds from the South-Southeast just add to the brew. Result: massive thunderstorms. Lightning. Thunder. Flooding rains. Hail. Tornadoes.
In my nearly twenty years of living in Texas, I've seen some jim-dandy thunderstorms. The worst are called "supercells," which can be many hundreds of miles across & their tops can reach in excess of 50,000 feet in the atmosphere. You see one of those babies & you wanna stay indoors.
The lightning here is INCREDIBLE. It is often intense...one wonders if it is on a heat seeking mission, with YOU as its target. You can see it for miles & miles.
Until I'd moved here, I'd never seen lightning go from one end of the sky to the other--in pulse beats. (It brings to mind a verse from the Bible..."for as the lightning flashes out of the East & shines even unto the West, that's how the coming of the Son of Man shall be." I'M NOT READY YET!!!)
Last June, a thunderstorm sat over the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for nearly five hours, & we had the most vivid display of lightning I'd ever seen. The lightning "spidered" across the sky for HOURS. One flash after another. It was AMAZING. Had a great view of it, too, since the dumb storm knocked out all our power.
The thunder can literally knock you out of bed. You're sound asleep, & suddenly...BAA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM-MMMMM-MMMMM!!! It shakes the very ground under your feet. You see a flash of lightning, start counting...one Mississippi...two Mississippi...three Mississippi...four Mississippi...the number you hear the thunder on, stop & divide by two. That's supposed to tell you how close you were to the last lightning strike. (Now--if you see the flash & immediately hear the thunderclap, you were WAY too close. I can remember my mother saying, "If you see the lightning & hear the thunder, it missed you.")
Rainfall. I've seen it rain 4" in one hour! THAT'S a heavy rain. It can come up such a rainstorm that if you're driving, you have to pull off to the side of the road because you can't see anything. Plus, the rain mixes with the oil that's built up on road surfaces & the roadways become slippery; this causes a lot of accidents. (People here don't know how to drive in frog-stranglers.) Last week, we had nearly 6" of rain in one day. We needed rain...but NOT ALL AT ONCE!!!! More heavy rain is expected this weekend...along with the possibility of severe weather. LOVELY.
Hail...can grow to amazing proportions here in Texas. I've never seen it--& I pray I never do--but I've heard of hailstones getting to the size of GRAPEFRUITS. Imagine what that will do to your roof...your car...your head if it bounced off it...OW. PAIN LINES!!! (The biggest hail I've ever seen--up to this writing--is marble sized* & that hurts if it pops you on the head. I wondered if what they said was true , that you can count the rings inside a hailstone if you cut it open. That's supposed to tell you how many times it went back up in the thunderstorm before it became too heavy & fell. It is, & I had a bump to prove it!!) [*UPDATE: Saturday, March 30, we had severe thunderstorms move through Burleson, Arlington, & parts of Fort Worth. Most of the hail that fell was pea- to marble-sized, but there were some hailstones that were the size of quarters, even half-dollars! The sky preceding the hailfall was UGLY...purple, green, black, green, orange, green...you get the idea. You could hear the roar of the approach of the hail. There's me, thinking, TORNADO!!!!]
Fort Worth suffered its costliest hailstorm in 1995, on May 5 (Mayfest); a lot of people were injured by falling hail, there was billions of dollars worth of damage to cars & buildings.
And now, the tornado. Not all thunderstorms produce tornadoes (THANK GOD!!)--the conditions must be exactly right. I've been in two of them here in Texas (one in Ohio); they weren't big 'uns (F-1 on the Fujita Scale, with winds from 75-110 MPH), but they were bad enough to cause damage.
The first one I was in in Texas was in 1983, near the old Carswell Air Force Base (now Naval Air Station Fort Worth). I was in the hospital, 3rd floor. Not much warning...all the staff could do was pull all of the patient beds out into the center hallway & shut all the doors to the patient's rooms. You could definately hear the roar as it passed...& the sound of hail busting out all of the windows. Whatta mess.
The second one was in January of 1996, here in Burleson; it took the roof off of two sections of the "O"-shaped apartment complex I live in. 'Course, my side was one of them...there I am, hiding in my bathroom, WISHING I had a basement to hide in. That's one thing I've never understood...WHY isn't it MANDATORY that underground shelter be made available???? I'm sorry...I'd much rather be underground than hiding in a bathroom (or other centrally located room...IF YOU HAVE ONE). When I came out of my "hidey-hole" to survey the damage, Niagara Falls was pouring out of my ceiling light fixture. This was NOT good. (Thank God the power was out, or else I could have been doing the "electric shuffle!") The carpeting was soaked...I was out of my apartment for over two months until the needed repairs could be completed. I still live in the same complex, different apartment.
Needless to say...whenever there's even a threat of severe weather, I don't sleep very well...if I get too nervous, I've been known to sleep in the downstairs bathroom! If severe storms are on the way, I get Karen (my twin sister, who's also storm-phobic...but NOT as bad as me) & we'll both cram into this teeny tiny bathroom. (It's actually a half-bathroom.) At night, we're both jammed in there...not much room. Karen's bony elbows are diggin' into my back, my face is squished up against the toilet...NOT a pleasant experience. That's when I think to myself, I WISH WE HAD A BASEMENT!!!!!!!!! (And lately, I've been thinking that a lot.)
|
