Thoughts Are With The Tornado Victims In The South

We've all been watching the coverage of the devastating tornado outbreak that hit the Southern states. 250 people, so far, confirmed dead. Beyond sad. Watching all this I can't help but be reminded of May 3, 1999. That was one of the scariest nights of my life. Between 3 & 5pm they started forming near OKC and just blew up. The F5 that formed that night was almost, if not, a mile wide and recorded the strongest winds ever at over 300 mph. Data's still not in for the storms that hit Alabama but the tornado that hit Tuscaloosa may have been even bigger. And that's beyond frightening. Thoughts and prayers go out for the those down South. Let's hope this doesn't happen again any time soon.

Storms, Storms, Go Away

The time? 5 am. The place? My home. Me, I'm sound asleep all nice and comfy. A little warm but not too bad. I hear something in the distance. It's the telephone. It doesn't really wake me but it does arouse me somewhat. A minute or two later I hear another noise. Some sort of beeping. It's my answering machine. I wake up and look at the clock. 4:37. "Who in the world is leaving a message at 5 am?" I ask myself. I get up and press play. "This is a weather alert. A Severe Thunderstorm Warning has been issued for your area". Crap. I turn on the tv and change the channel from FNC to my local news. Storms are starting to push through Tulsa. A few miles from me, but they're moving so fast that the National Weather Service decided to issue a warning for my area. The weatherman says that the storms will be in my area at 5:08 am. "The NWS is concerned that some areas could receive winds up to 90mph. Crap. I open my door and see a few flashes of lighting in the distance. Then the winds start to pick up. At 5:08, on the nose, a huge gust of wind hits. It lasts less than 30 seconds and is gone. Power flashes off and on for the next couple of minutes. Off and on. Off and on. The storms blows through and all that happens to me is my trash cans get pushed around a bit. But other areas aren't so lucky. South Tulsa seems to get the worst of it. Strong straight lines winds tear through and rip roofs off homes, blow car ports around and up root entire trees. It looks like a tornado had ripped through. Nobody is injured but there is quite a bit of damage.

Big Winter Storm Coming

We have a chance of a second huge Winter storm coming in on Thursday. Several inches of ice/sleet/snow are possible with significant power outages predicted. Nothing is set in stone yet, so hopefully the forecast will change. If power goes out I'll still be able to update the site via my cell, but hopefully it won't come to that. We just had the snow melt away from the last storm that hit on Christmas Eve so we really don't need another. But two huge storms back to back? I can't recall that ever happening around here before.

Another Ice Storm

If you've been watching your local weather you've probably seen that the middle of the country is under the gun for another Winter storm. So far the ice hasn't been that bad. I've had a few power flashes but it hasn't gone out yet. Hopefully it won't. But if I don't post for a while, you'll know why.

On a side note, in a bit of irony AC/DC is performing a show in Tulsa tonight. The name of the tour? The Black Ice tour. Just thought that was funny.

Rude Awakening

Not even 7:30 this morning I wake up to my phone ringing. "This chief meteorologist so and so, there is a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for your area". I look outside and see some lighting and a little rain, but nothing that bad. 5-10 minutes later the torrential rain hits. Around 8 am they issue a Tornado warning for my county, that's heading right to me. I have no tornado shelter, but I have to go to the store anyway so I go there for what I need plus the shelter it provides. Don't even have time to comb my hair or wipe the sleep from of my eyes. I get there just after 8:30 and it's pouring. A few minutes later I get a call on my cell. "This chief meteorologist so and so, there is a Tornado Warning for your area. Take cover". Luckily we didn't get anything. With temps in the 70's yesterday it's no wonder we got storms. I just wish the temps would go down into the 40's and just stay there. It was hot last night.

Cold Weather & Gas Prices

These thing aren't intertwined or anything. I just didn't want to do two posts.

Cold Weather
I don't know if I've ever mentioned it or not, but I'm a cold weather person. When the temps start to dip into the 40's, that's when I'm happy. Today's been a cold rainy day and I'm just not use to it yet. I've got my heater running as well as a little space heater I have. I need a couple of more weeks to acclimate myself.

Gas Prices
Not sure what the prices are in your area, but around my little corner of Oklahoma they around $1.75/gallon and lower in some areas. If they keep dropping the way they have we could be under $1/gallon by the end of the year. I don't think they'll go that low, but we could get close.

A Blessing From Heaven

Sure, it might kill a few people, cause millions of dollars in damage and cause a few thousand to end up homeless but thank God for Gustav.

And on Olbermann's show no less. What a shocker.

UPDATE
Now we have former DNC chairman Don Fowler & Congressman John Spratt joking about Gustav, and it was caught on video. The audio is a little hard to understand, but you do hear enough to know they're talking about hurricane Gustav.

"I think this demonstrates God's on our side"

UPDATE 2
Don Fowler apologizes for his comment and then blames the person who taped him saying it.

One doesn't anticipate that one's private conversation will be surreptitiously taped by some right-wing nutcase, but that's the nature of what we're dealing with."

I Hate Summer

The Big Storms Of '08

This weekend saw some powerful storms rip through parts of Oklahoma. No tornadoes, thankfully, but some very damaging straight line winds. Speeds between 60-80 mph in some areas. Hail the size of your fist. Flooding. And I learned something from this. Be careful what you wish for. I heard on the news that some areas were getting 60 mph winds for up to three minutes non-stop. "I would like to experience that one time". And it happened. The wind hit and I lost half my tree in my front yard. One whole side of it was ripped off. If you'll remember back to December and the massive ice storm we had, it's the same Bradford Pear tree that the ice got a hold of and nearly took down. But it came back. But not this time. Here's what it looked like before, just as Spring was setting in and it started to blossom. I, sadly, don't have a picture of it in it's full glory. And here's what it looks like today. It's going to have to come down now. It just makes me sick. I loved this tree. Yeah, it was too big. And it was hard to mow around, but I loved it still. I just happened to be looking out my front door when it happened. I heard a pop, you'd think something like that would be much louder, and saw it go down. Never seen anything like it. But it could have been much worse. Some trees were actually uprooted. Big trees.

Cool Picture

Lightning bolts appear above and around the Chaiten volcano as seen from Chana, some 30 kms (19 miles) north of the volcano, as it began its first eruption in thousands of years, in southern Chile May 2, 2008. Cases of electrical storms breaking out directly above erupting volcanoes are well documented, although scientists differ on what causes them. Picture taken May 2, 2008

Too bad it's not a bigger image. That'd make an awesome wallpaper.

Winter's Last Stand

Just a little over two weeks until Spring and Winter has decided to puff it's chest out one last time. A HUGE storm rolled through last night. Some areas, less than 30 miles away, got nothing. Here in my little town, we got hit with 6-8" of snow. Outside my front door was 6". Before I went to bed last night I decided to have a look outside to see what was going one. Almost white out conditions. I could barely see across the street. The good news, at least, is that there was no ice with this one. After that ice storm back in December, another one would have been devastating. Around mid-40's today and 50's tomorrow should melt most of it away.

Proof Of Global Cooling?

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years... No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

It seems that despite what Al Gore and his followers say, the debate isn't over.
Story

Heresy

Burn the heretic at the stake. Everyone knows that man is the only cause. That's the carved in stone consensus. It was in a movie. These blasphemers need to be taught a lesson.

After The Storm

The clean up begins. The tree in my front yard's not so bad. One limb and I can cut a lot of it by hand, but for the main part of the limb that fell and the tree in my backyard I'm going to need to find someone with a chainsaw. No telling when the city will be able to get around here to pick the mess up.

Now, I'm going to need all of you to wish me luck for I am going to be stupid and venture out tomorrow to the stores. I need to get of couple of things for Christmas plus stuff for Christmas dinner. Wal-Mart is going to be a madhouse. If I don't see you again, it's because I'm locked in a loony bin after suffering my nervous breakdown.

One last thing. There won't a Wednesday Hero next week. Instead it's going to be posted on Monday, Christmas Eve.

:UPDATE:
I survived Super Saturday. I knew it would crazy, and it was, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. But that may be due to the weather. It was windy, cold and rainy. I guess it kept some people in. But I am finally done Christmas shopping. Now, one day of rest before the crazy starts up again. We have to celebrate on Christmas Eve this year because not everyone has Christmas day off.

It Burns, It Burns

Today was the first day in which the sun came out since, I believe the weather said, October. I went outside and damn near went blind. It's been so gloomy I'd forgotten what the sun looked like.

The Day The World Stood Still

The worst ice storm in state history. That's what they're calling it. I've heard somewhere between 500,000 & 1 million without power and I don't know how many have died as a result. It rolled in late Saturday night and, while the bad weather is over with, the system finally moved out yesterday. I lost power Monday morning and it came back on 36 hours later. I was one of the lucky ones. Some won't have power back on until sometime next week. The worst of the damage was to tree limbs. If someone has a tree that didn't lose a limb they're one of the lucky ones. You've heard the term "Winter Wonderland"? This was a Winter Wasteland. It actually would have looked quite nice, trees covered in white, had it not been ice and limbs strewn across yards and roads. The state has brought in electric crews from Texas, Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, the Dakotas and other states to help restore power. It'll be months before they're able to get everything repaired. And now, as a result of the storm, they're going to look at proposing to move power lines under ground. Uh, duh. And to top it all off, we have another storm moving in Friday night.

Freezing temps + no warm water - heat = 0 fun.

I lost the tree in my back yard. Every limb but one was taken down. And I have this huge Bradford Pear tree in my front yard. When it's in full bloom, there is nothing like it. The ice got a hold of it as well. It looked like it was split in half. But it came back, losing only one limb. Which is amazing. But I have no idea if it will make a comeback this spring or not. And and all, I was lucky. No real damage, except my fence was taken out by my neighbor's tree.

Al Gore: Brainwashing Demigod?

We all know The Church of Green and their leader, Al Gore. We all know their tactics. Either you agree with them or you a "global warming denier", which is on par with a holocaust denier, and you're ridiculed. I wonder if Dr. William Gray will be labeled a heretic for daring to speak out against Saint Gore and his IPCC Disciples?

Yeah Fall

Woke up this morning, took the trash out and found myself shivering a little. 53 degrees. I could see my breathe. Fall has officially arrived. As my long time readers know, I love this kind of weather. I've went on and on about going out on cold Winter mornings and breathing in the crisp air to wake myself up. It's almost that time. It's been so warm recently and now to watch the morning lows start to drop and the sunset arriving earlier and earlier. Yeah Fall.

Damn You Global Warming

If you've been paying attention to the news you know it's been a bad week for weather in fly over country. If you live here, then you KNOW it's been a bad weather week. Almost 70 tornadoes, but very few deaths. You know when you have that many tornadoes this early in the season it's going to be a hellish April and May. We, in Oklahoma, had our first death due to a tornado since 2001 on Wednesday. It's been a relatively quite few years. It was nice. But I think it's time to make up for that. I hate weather.

Dagnabit

I was supposed to go and get me a new grill this week and cook me up a mess of ribs because the weather was supposed to be nice and sunny all week with it being 80 on Wednesday. And now? Rain half the week. I hate Oklahoma weather.