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June 26, 2008
High Winds
Last night, just about the time I was drifting off to sleep, the Tornado Sirens went off. For those of you unfamiliar (that is, foreigners) Tornado Sirens are sounded whenever we have a tornado watch and/or warning. They also go off Wednesdays at noon as part of testing the system and as a reminder for me to take a bike ride.
As you can see one of the problems I have with the sirens is that I can't recall when they go off (except for Wednesday). I also don't remember if it's a watch that means conditions are right and a warning means a tornado had been sighted or if it's the other way around. I use the non-Wednesday-noontime sirens to mean to turn on the TV as I know the weatherperson will tell me what to do.
So, I turned on the TV.
My boys all piled into my room as we tried to sort things out. One of them, the oldest, seemed to be overreacting in my opinion and insisted we go to my Wizard-of-Oz-like cellar (which meant braving the severe rain to get to the outside door.) While I imagine a lot of calm people have been swept away by tornadoes I'm not one to panic and wanted a bit more info before I went that far. As our weatherman had, just moments before said he was surprised we'd had a tornado warning and not just a severe thunderstorm warning, I wasn't sure seeking shelter was needed. (Also, the neighboring county, that I can bike to in five minutes, had been dropped from Tornado-Warning status to Severe-Thunderstorm status.)
Then of course, as we noticed the storm had passed over us (via Doppler Weather Radar images) our weather team reminded us that a Tornado Warning (which is what we were under) means we should seek shelter immediately. Doppler Radar had detected rotation earlier.
[As an aside, if you live in a place that doesn't get severe electrical storms you really don't know what you're missing. So long as nobody gets hurt they're really sort of amazing and a damned fine example of what mother nature can due when she sets her mind to it.]
A wall cloud was spotted several miles away. There was lots of thunder and lightening. And some small hail here and there. We had high winds, serious rain and the thunder and lightening in my neighborhood (this would have been when Doppler Radar had Hilliard getting the brunt of the storm … I'm not sure how the hail missed us).
I have an old tree in my front yard that is trying to fall down one piece at a time. We can get a light breeze and this thing will drop a small, dead branch; I have to pick bits of it up each time I mow the yard. This morning I was interested in seeing what the storm might have done to it. And the storm did seemingly nothing; or the tree gave ups it's branches so easily they were blown into the next neighborhood.
What the storm seemed to have done was pick up a piece of 3x4 landscape timber that was about two feet long and toss it down the alley. And really, my first thought was that a kid had done it who'd, apparently, been taking a walk outside after the storm … yea, it didn't make a lot of sense but neither did the wind thought; my neighbor had five 2x4s leaning against his garage and they were still leaning upright not far from my landscape timber. I picked up my chunk of wood, put it on the pile and walked around to the van. As I got to the front yard there were four or five 3-foot long pieces of landscape timber in my front yard. Again, hoodlums made more sense than anything. And then I noticed the swatch of leaves laying with the timbers — leaves that had been in a pile next to the mound of cut up landscape timbers in the backyard area.
Landscape timbers are not terribly aerodynamic. Had the leaves not been with them I'd have thought kids did it even as I struggled for a motive.
A Motorola Razor isn't terribly aerodynamic either. Yet, somehow, the high winds opened my back door, after unlocking it, and swept my cell phone off the kitchen table, where I'm sure I left it, and then placed it on a table near the grill — where it got rained on for a good, long time. As irritating as this is I'm pleased to report that the high winds were kind enough to lock up after themselves and not make a mess of the kitchen.
(The Razor had gone into emergency-shutdown mode when it got wet (yea, that's it). I took the battery out this morning and let things dry for an hour before putting it all back together. It is up and running.)
Technorati Tags: Hilliard, Thunderstorms
Posted by delmer at June 26, 2008 7:13 AM
Comments
Our tornado sirens only go off for two reasons: there is a warning or it is test-the-system time. Test-the-system time is always 10:00 A.M. on the first Tuesday of the month. The alarms do not go off when we are under a tornado watch.
It would be nice to have different sounds for a tornado watch and a tornado warning. Maybe the authorities think that is too confusing or too expensive.
Posted by: Missy at June 26, 2008 12:01 PM
I'm glad you are safe. My older son gets worried and starts quoting weathermen (hard to explain but very funny when you see an 8 year old doing it) when there is any hint of bad weather. He gets very worried about everything and instructs us all in what to do.
Hoodlums is one of my favorite words. Thank you for using it!
Posted by: radioactive tori at June 26, 2008 12:36 PM
I remember back when I was a kid and the tornado siren would go off every Saturday at noon...or was that a siren for a nuclear attack? It was the late 60's/early 70s in Miami...we were only a short distance from Castro's evil empire after all. They disabled it at some point in the early 80s.
My, what courteous high winds you have to lock your back door after moving your phone outside! ;)
Posted by: Ginger at June 26, 2008 12:38 PM
High winds? A perfect chance to link up with me. Throw me a bone, Delmer.
Posted by: Black Hockey Jesus at June 26, 2008 2:30 PM
One thing I really don't miss about living in Ohio--its propensity for tornadoes.
(I survived that big scary one in Cincy about 8 or 9 years ago)
Glad the phone was okay. That's pretty cool!
Posted by: diane at June 26, 2008 4:03 PM
Missy: A funnel cloud was spotted (weeks ago) not far from where the boys and I were and the sirens failed to go off. We'd been at movie and didn't hear of the excitement until a day or two later.
RT: "Hoodlums" is a word I picked up from my father ... one of the wisest men I know.
Ginger: I remember learning about nuclear attacks when I was in elementary school (late 60s). We were told to seek refuge under our desks. We didn't have sirens so I guess we'd have had to rely on the big 'boom' to alert us.
BHJ: HighWindsInYourVagina ... it has a ring. I *do* need to update my blog roll.
Diane: I may have spoke too soon about the phone. It seems to be *quirky* now. (It appears to be less and less quirky as time passes.)
Posted by: delmer at June 27, 2008 9:44 AM