Thursday 6 April 2006

Supposed to be a severe weather day, we'll see. Some of the weather bunnies are trying to hype up the fear factor. It will probably blow past us and form up east of our area like it did last week. Oh well, spring can be exciting around here. We are watching the wx channel now as I type. I've been making an effort to write in my little green book, which is what I use for creative writing. On Saturday afternoon while I was waiting for an assignment, I wrote what was on my mind, which was the weather:

The spring thunder has begun. This time of year when the seson is in its adolescence, not knowing which way where to go, can be quite interesting. When your armpits feel warm and sticky, but the hairs on your arms are standing on end from the goose bump chills, it is time to be paying a little attention to the skies here in the midwest. Change here can come violently and suddenly, then be perfectly calm and gorgeous afterward like nothing ever happened, save the scarred landscape and broken lives. But, ohhh the beauty of a late afternoon thunderstorm with it's drama, followed by torrents of water, then gently bubbling rain -- it is something to savor and enjoy. So, as the days grow longer, so too do the chances of the evil mix of opposite air masses that produce the boiling looming angry thunderheads with their crackling lightning and blasting winds with heavy rains and one of the plagues of the almighty -- killer hail. After the tempermental towers of wind and lightning do their worst, they taper to a gentle trickle of tiny drops inviting those of us lucky enough to have the time and a nice porch or awning to partake in the gentle nature of things. The storms eventually move on in the evening, usually leaving the landscape cool, dry and clean feeling, like a giant shower has just come through and scrubbed everything and renewed the earth. The only reminder of the drama that just happened is a distant rumble and light show on the eastern horizon and the water draining down into the freshly washed streets as the ghostly fingers of mist reach up to the sky, as if yearning to rejoin that which has forsaken it, wanting to go from the liquid state back to the gaseous state, and rejoin the thunderheads that produced it -- yearning to be free, yearning to be pure -- elemental.

I've added another video to YouTube, yes, it's another train.....when it uploads to YouTube that is.

Also, the national weather service has put us under a high risk for severe weather. The last time we were under a high risk was May 4, 2003. Uh Oh!!!!
--- 09:38

Well, another day of chasing, but all we saw were some great clouds and some lightning. It all looked hopeful for some formations early on in the afternoon, but everything developed way north or way south. We started out by going to Lawrence and waiting. I got a haircut, which was actually in the plans before the threat of severe weather. Suyen did some shopping and got herself an x-wing bra and some blouses. We headed out west towards Topeka from there when things started popping. We went out in search of storms and WiFi hotspots. It looked good in topeka, but the storms to the west went north, one storm to the south which we decided to chase petered out, and there was one blob way to the south that we ended up catching up to south of the metro -- some dramatic lightning but not a lot of severe stuff. We put about 300 miles into this trip. We ended up in Warrensburg when we gave up the chase. We had some bad Chinese and stopped at Wal*Fart before heading home. -- 23:45