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Ridin’ The Storms Out
May 2, 2012
Yep, that’s right – storms in the plural. We’ve just finished a four day run (although I think this all started Thursday) of storms and each day/night the severety increased. I was up watching storms for 3 nights in a row! After Monday night’s action I was able to wind it up early (2 am) and got some good zzzz’s for a change. Here’s what we’ve been having – in a nutshell.
Friday night it seems like I was up at some point, but I don’t think it was really bad. Saturday night I know we were up around 5am due to bad storms in the area, but luckily they passsed through and they weren’t too bad, but I think we got a lot of rain from those. The girls got up because of a crack of thunder that shook the house so they kept me company. I
Sunday evening we had a tornado warning in our county – it was almost in our town but the tornado decided to drop down in the next little town over. They still blew the storm sirens here though because it was so close. I stayed up off and on during the night and the girls fell asleep on the couch so they stayed downstairs all night too. Yes, I do not sleep much in tornado weather. I probably should get one of those NOAA weather radios.
Monday early evening into the early morning hours was the real doozy. I knew when that storm started pulling in that it was going to be trouble. The clouds just looked weird and as the storm grew they skies grew more ominous. The air was heavy and still and all you could hear were crickets chirping. I stepped outside a few times to look at the clouds to see what they were doing and it was getting scary. That storm grew to huge proportions and ended up mostly in the county east of us, although some of it leaked into our county just a little. By 7pm tornado warnings were going off for that county. There were also storms in the counties west of us – about 2 three counties away – that were headed our way too. And yes tornadoes were in those as well.
So, it was a long evening and that storm to our east took 3 hours to get through that one county because it was just poking along. They did get a few tornado touchdowns and there was damage, but the biggest issue was the flooding rains that went with it. Then the big storms from the west moved in and at first it looked like it was going to be really bad, but then they lined out and weakened and that’s how they went through our town – in a line with high winds. After they went through our county, they torqued up a bit and more tornado warnings east of us. What a hellish night for those poor folks over there! The NOAA warnings on the radio seemed to never quit – severe storm, tornado, and flood warnings were all going off constantly it seemed. Finally at 2am we were in the clear and it was over FINALLY! So, I went to bed.
The rest of the week will be quiet – thank you God – so we can all catch up on our sleep. It will also be hot like late May, but that is fine by me. Beats the four days of storms we had!! I took a few pictures of that first storm from the back end as it was just so awesome. The dark cloud in front was really moving and looked like a big ship passing the big white cloud in front of it. So, there you have it – all of our severe weather for the month in four days (I’m hoping anyway).