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.