Severe thunderstorm...not quite
Jun. 28th, 2006 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoAbout 7:30 tonight, a half hour to closing and a lot of teens still in the library, I looked up from the desk and saw really black threatening clouds to the north. We have an excellent view in that direction since that whole side of the library is glass looking out onto fields and prairie. You can see all the way into Wisconsin. Normally storms out there are traveling east and don't hit us directly, and the sun was still clear in the west when I looked that way. It was so black to the north though that I called up the NOAA web site to look at the radar.
Then the phone rang and it was my mate calling from home to say there was a severe thunderstorm warning and we should expect hail and winds up to 75 miles an hour, in just five minutes. The NOAA weather radio alert had sounded for him at the farm. I don't know why the one we have in the library didn't trigger, but it failed to go off.
So with five minutes' warning, what do you do? I couldn't chase people out and lock up. We crossed our fingers and waited. It was dead calm, no rain, no wind. Actually nothing hit us until 7:50, ten minutes to closing. Even then, there was no hail, and the winds weren't that bad. I saw no tree branches down on my way home in fact. But it sure rained. For about five minutes I felt like I was inside an air-filled aquarium immersed in some Neptunian depths. Solid water outside, so much so that if a shark had swum past the windows it would have seemed perfectly natural. The front foyer filled up with teenagers who were ready to leave but didn't want to go out into that. In another five minutes it was ending, and the sun was still out. By closing at 8 pm, there were only four teens left. The rain was over, I kicked them out onto the roofed portico in front of the building and locked the doors. I only needed my windshield wipers going home because of the spray from other vehicles. The rain was already ended. However, I estimate that Harvard got at least a half inch and maybe more in that five minute period. Streets were heavily puddled, with storm sewers running slowly at some intersections.
The storm had moved east, and I was treated to lots of lighting flashes against the black clouds as I drove home. The amount of rain at the farm, 15 miles south? A barely measurable eighth of an inch.
Then the phone rang and it was my mate calling from home to say there was a severe thunderstorm warning and we should expect hail and winds up to 75 miles an hour, in just five minutes. The NOAA weather radio alert had sounded for him at the farm. I don't know why the one we have in the library didn't trigger, but it failed to go off.
So with five minutes' warning, what do you do? I couldn't chase people out and lock up. We crossed our fingers and waited. It was dead calm, no rain, no wind. Actually nothing hit us until 7:50, ten minutes to closing. Even then, there was no hail, and the winds weren't that bad. I saw no tree branches down on my way home in fact. But it sure rained. For about five minutes I felt like I was inside an air-filled aquarium immersed in some Neptunian depths. Solid water outside, so much so that if a shark had swum past the windows it would have seemed perfectly natural. The front foyer filled up with teenagers who were ready to leave but didn't want to go out into that. In another five minutes it was ending, and the sun was still out. By closing at 8 pm, there were only four teens left. The rain was over, I kicked them out onto the roofed portico in front of the building and locked the doors. I only needed my windshield wipers going home because of the spray from other vehicles. The rain was already ended. However, I estimate that Harvard got at least a half inch and maybe more in that five minute period. Streets were heavily puddled, with storm sewers running slowly at some intersections.
The storm had moved east, and I was treated to lots of lighting flashes against the black clouds as I drove home. The amount of rain at the farm, 15 miles south? A barely measurable eighth of an inch.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 03:15 am (UTC)I miss watching thunderstorms in the mountains...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 06:44 am (UTC)It got really black, and then power went out. Then fifteen minutes later the sun was out.
Shortstorm
Date: 2006-06-29 10:50 pm (UTC)I think we caught the same exact storm and the wierdest part was how the undersides of the clouds looked after the storm had passed by. BTW it was a huge dump of hard big drop rain but only for like five to ten minutes. Guys at work drove their vehicles indoors against the chance it could turn to hail but no big deal... heck the roof that normally leaks in rain stroms didn't.
One of the pilots said the undersides of clouds like that are called WOOLY, and that is close to how it looked. Big puffy bumps like the back of a fully wooled-up sheep but, to me, it looked more exactly like bubble wrap. In any event I had never before seen cloudy shapes like that. I am as often as astounded at the weather as I am at the life both plant and animal, on this amazing planet Earth.
Rides and picture taken are free.
Imperator
Re: Shortstorm
Date: 2006-06-30 12:24 am (UTC)Mmmm, ride. I could do with that or at least a good hug. I'm doing better, now, I was on Taps for several hours so far this week. You've probably been at work, which is OK, but I'm improving the odds. *G*