TORNADO WARNING...Yesterdays weather matched my mood and even felt a bit satisfying while scary at the same time!
The morning started out fairly muggy as we have had nothing but rain since the last weekend, which I had been griping about how dry it had been. Then by afternoon was changed to a tornado watch!
PoD had finished up her work here and went home.
The first lightning show started around 4:00 or so and became quite a sight to behold...
We had the green sky and terrific wind to add to its drama. BillyRoo and I watched all of its excitement while thunder shook the house....
It was SCARY and exciting all wrapped together!
PoD had emptied my rain gauge earlier, so it was very surprising to see it FULL [40mm] around a hour later! That's how fast and hard the rain came down!
We watched the clouds swirl and were both amazed to see how fast and low they were traveling! We had bets on the huge tree across the street not surviving this storm, as half of it was dead and should have been cut down.
As it turned out we had nothing to worry about... its still standing!
The other exciting part was watching the torrents of water coming down the street!
The photo below shows BillyRoo's car and the roadway which by then was completely covered! The dark stripe is the dirt and gravel being washed from the neighbor's driveway across the street from where ever it was coming from.
We live near the bottom of the hill [PoD lives near the top] and get a lot of the water run-off going by the place. Happily our place kind of sits on a hill so there was no worry of flooding from the run-off but others at the end of the street weren't so lucky...
The poor guy at the corner [white garage] was busy trying to use his truck tires to divert the river away from his house but found it futile as it was coming down the hill to his place too fast to be directed elsewhere. You can see by the photo that the streets are full! You can't see the curb at his place! It didn't help him much that people kept driving by and making large wakes of water as they motored through it.
BillyRoo just had to go join the thrill seeker too and I was able to get a shot of the driveway with the gravel run-off.
I had to use two cameras as one [BillyRoos] kept focusing on the rain drops making the shots dark and blurry looking. My camera caught all of the "Orbs" dancing in the rain...;)
The storm decided to let up for a bit so PoD & Trebor called and we decided to check out the rest of the town to see how things faired...
Everywhere we had pot holes the water had added to the damage!
The top of the hill was clean with surprisingly hardly any tree damage. But as you drove downward you could see the pavement heaved all over the place! Big chunks of concrete pavement had washed up all over and was laying in the middle of the roads!
We have pipeline workers living in trailer courts around town and they had LOTS of water and muck to contend with. We saw many a resident busy digging trenches worried that the rain wasn't going to stop. We saw lots of low-lying spots full of water and who knows how their gardens faired? We never planted one so we were smiling!
We even drove out to the reservior to see how the run-off faired there and was amazed at the massive amount of water in the fields surrounding it! I know the rain did some major damage to crops!
This was NOT the kind of rain the farmers were asking for! I think some of them had been praying for rain too hard!
Finishing our tour, PoD dropped BillyRoo & me back home only to be met by a cop vehicle parked across the street from my next door neighbors? He was there for a good 10 minutes before another cop car parked behind PoD's car!
What the hell?
The one across the street got out and went to my neighbor place but was stopped by the barking of the mean dog [remember previous story about that dog] and he stopped dead. Mean while the other cop got out of his vehicle and they both stood at the gate keeping their distance from the dog as they yelled for the guy to come out! Which he finally did. The cop patted him down and put him into his vehicle and drove away...
What that was all about....who knows?
They did drop him off 3 hours later?
So that was our exciting evening...
Getting up this morning [4:30] to the sound of wind rattling the window and thought...here we go again...but NOT
It's just windy right now...which I'd rather have than HOT & MUGGY!
My rain gauge registered another 20 mm since the last emptying so the total is now 60mm in less than a 24 hour period!
I did take another shot of the pavement near my place...
