Severe Storms

May 25, 2011

We have been being hit by severe thunderstorms and small tornadoes in the state of Kansas. But they haven’t just been here. The south had them earlier this month, and then Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma had large deadly ones this week.  I recently wrote about storm chasers here. Since that day, I’ve seen more storm chasers and a few college study teams from different state universities. Last Thursday, we had a downward wind burst here in Byers. It was reported on here, by the Pratt Tribune. The newspaper failed to report the other downed pivots in the Byers area. There were two more downed pivots west of the house. All the pivots that were blown down were running east to west. The down burst of wind was traveling south to north. None of the pivots that were blown over were part of The Owner’s farms. Wooster had to check the 25 pivots that evening just to make sure. The Owner helped out and checked eight or so of them that he was near. Wooster was very grateful, for the pivots are very spread out.

When we first moved out here, Wooster was the one with the most fear of the tornado season. I was not. Now, however, it is a bit frightening when it is actually happening around us. When the downward wind burst happened last week, one of the doors that are on the Southside of the house was blown open and there were several limbs and tops of trees blown down. It was a bit frightening, especially when the weather radio went off. I thought it was for a tornado, but the alarm was for a severe thunderstorm. I had snatched R up and was heading, very quickly I might add, to the safety room under the stairs. All was well within five minutes. Just yesterday, we had more severe weather. It produced quarter sized hail and blinding rain.  I say blinding, because you can’t see very far during it. I thought all was clear, and even checked the radar when setting out for a jewelry party in town. As we were headed down the blacktop, I had to stop in the middle of the road for the blinding rain. Even when stopped I couldn’t see the front of the car or around the sides of the car to the ditches. It was a bit scary and for a few seconds I thought I might be in the middle of a tornado. I only sat there for about a minute and then it had passed. I continued down the blacktop in the sun shine. I tell ya, these storms here in the Midwest make the southern thunderstorms look like sissies. I think it’s because everything is so wide open here, there are no trees or other things to block the wind and it helps the storms pick up speed. I’m sure there are more technological terms to describe the storms. But I don’t care to look it up, besides meteorology doesn’t interest me that much. If you comment and tell me how it all happens, I’ll likely gloss over it, so don’t bother trying to tell me how it happens. Thanks though.

Here are pictures of our trusty weather radio. NOAA weathermen and I are best friends now. I tune in almost every hour when the little lights are on.

On a side note:

In all our marriedum, Wooster and I have not been without electricity. Well, there was a time in Rayle that we lost power sometime during the night, but it was quickly restored. And there have been little power blinks or surges were the power goes off for a couple of seconds and then returns. Not even once have we had to rely on flashlights or candles for an extend period of time. That is, until now. Wooster got in at 9pm last night (R and I were still at the jewelry party). He started in his nightly routine and 15 minutes in, the power went out. The power also went out in Pratt, were R and I were. So, when I got home at 9:30pm, Wooster was working out upstairs with a flashlight. The power came back on around 10pm. We survived our first power outage of thirty minutes. Wooster realized that he loves electricity and that we couldn’t be “plain” like the Amish.  🙂 It is a nice luxury to have and we are very grateful for it. There are many people across our country without it and many people in the world that wished they had it. So, we’ll be grateful for electricity for as long as we have it.

Second side note:

After re-reading the above a passage, it would seem that Wooster is a softie or requires a lot of maintenance. He doesn’t. It was just an inconvenience that he didn’t want to deal with after working 14 hours on an abundance of other little problems that he had faced during the day.