Severe Weather Day

I woke up early (for me) today and headed out for a little physical therapy. My leg is still a major concern. I never knew trying to get healthy could cause so much pain!

I’m probably kvetching more than I should. Helaine says I’m an awful patient. Sure… probably.

I went home, thinking I’d take a little nap before work. There were thunderstorms on the radar, which were expected. What I didn’t expect was Helaine waking me after a few minutes. A tornado warning had been posted.

There’s just no good way to absorb a warning like that. This isn’t Kansas. we don’t have roadside sirens to wail. Guy like me have to ‘sell’ the warning over-the-air.

No tornadoes were spotted, thankfully. However, today’s weather gave me pause, as I thought about the real power of the atmosphere.

We had vivid cloud-to-ground lightning. That means a charge of several tens of thousand volts formed between the clouds and Earth. That’s real energy. Just because you can’t plug the vacuum cleaner into it doesn’t make it any less powerful.

We also had hail approaching golf ball size. In 23 years here, that’s the largest hail I’d ever seen.

Since hail is formed as water drops freeze while suspended in clouds, you need really strong winds to get large hail. Golf ball size means 60-70 mph winds blowing straight up! Now you know one more reason why airplanes avoid thunderstorms.

You always hope your advice keeps people inside, out of harm’s way. And, as far as I know, no one was hurt. I’ll take a tiny bit of the credit.

4 thoughts on “Severe Weather Day”

  1. Geoff– you did a good job covering the storm!

    I was in Naugatuck (I was just leaving the high school) when the storm and hail hit!

    We went ahead of the storm on a hill, and you could see wall clouds trying to form! It was the most unstable sky i’ve ever seen, with clouds

    dropping and going back up all over the cloud system.

    If it’s alright with you i’d like to share a picture I took on my cellphone when I was on the edge of the storm showing how dark the sky was!

    http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/9562/photo060507004tn0.jpg

  2. Geoff, I grew up watching you and Dr. Mel on Channel 8 and wanted so badly to be a meteorologist. Since meteorology required too much math (not my area of expertise), I have resigned myself to be a weather fanatic. Anyhow, yesterday’s pics of the storms sent in did not convey the green sky I remember seeing before a tornado hit Hamden in 1989. I will never forget that sky and use that as my gauge of severe weather. From what I have read, that’s usually a good indication of severe storms (along with others). Is that the norm?

  3. Geoff, I grew up watching you and Dr. Mel on Channel 8 and wanted so badly to be a meteorologist. Since meteorology required too much math (not my area of expertise), I have resigned myself to be a weather fanatic. Anyhow, yesterday’s pics of the storms sent in did not convey the green sky I remember seeing before a tornado hit Hamden in 1989. I will never forget that sky and use that as my gauge of severe weather. From what I have read, that’s usually a good indication of severe storms (along with others). Is that the norm?

  4. We have sirens, but no one pays attention to them.

    What’s bad is we’ve got a moderate outlook for tomorrow and the chatter on the spotter reflectors is that this could be a bad deal. Can’t wait to see what Bob Lindmier says tonight.

    Fun, eh?

    -A

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