Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Spring! It exists!

Aside from a recent cold snap, the weather's been just grand.  The air is warm, the trees are leafing, the flowers are a-bloom, and the pollen, she is in the air.  So that's all very good.. except for the tornadoes.

A storm started late evening the other week.  Not unusual for around here.  Then the sirens started going off, so I ducked under the stairs.. the center-most point in my house.  The sirens kept going on and off for the better part of an hour.  Between intervals, I peeked out the window and saw what I later realized was the wall cloud passing right overhead.. that's the lowest part of the storm, a solid black, round column of cloud which spawns tornadoes.  It was preceded by a curtain of ground-striking lightning bolts.  Rather daunting, I must say.

The storm passed away north, and the worst I got was heavy rain and some wind.  Just a few miles away though, some neighborhoods got hit... trees uprooted and splintered, sections of roof gone, shingles everywhere.  Even my usual video store got hit.. they still have some ceiling panels broken and hanging. 

Well, that's Spring for ya!