What is up with the weather this year?? Okay, I realize the winter last year was a normal winter and we have been really spoiled for the last several years. I acquiesce to that fact.
The spring started out not so wonderful and had been very cool here. I think we should be having summer-like weather right now, but it is not happening. I want to be wearing shorts and instead we are usually still in jeans. I think we have only had two 80+ degree days so far this year.
The cool weather has presented itself with a bit of a confluence of bad things happening. Warm air to the south of us and our cool air is apparently a bad thing when they converge. Hence…tornadoes, hail storms and all around sucky weather for us.
Last Saturday whilst I was inside a movie theatre enjoying watching Sex and the City with my girlfriends, we heard thunder and the screen flickered. Not good. It was sunny when we went inside. Apparently it HAILED and a thunderstorm passed by while we were in there. Yay. I couldn’t wait to see if my car was damaged while sitting out in the parking lot. Luckily my brand-almost-new car was not damaged. It hailed at our house, but it wasn’t large enough or wind driven, so we didn’t have damage there either. A friend of ours that we met up with later that night said that their whole grass was covered with tons of hail. One of my coworkers said her plants were shredded from the hail north of where we live. Lovely.
Then, there was yesterday. All week the weather prognosticators had been telling us that we were going to have a bad storm on Thursday. Turns out, they were actually CORRECT for once. This led to me watching the weather news online all day to see if I needed to go get my babies out of daycare and hide in the basement. Brian was sent into the storm shelter at his work.
They said that the worst of it would come overnight. Fabulous. I love storms hitting while we are sleeping. I get so much sleep, since I spend the night worrying about a tornado hitting us while we are prone and unawares.
The storm last fall hit at around 3am. Brian and I woke up, but that was most likely due to the fact that lighting struck our tree about 15 feet from our bedroom. Most of our neighbors slept through it, including a family that lost all of their mature trees in the back of their yard. I was uneasy with storms before, but that one really made me scared. When I went downstairs to check the weather, our water birch in the backyard was pretty much horizontal from the 80 mph winds. Thank goodness it’s so flexible.
I think it is time to splurge and get a weather alert alarm. I have no idea which one to get or where to get one, but I need one for my own piece of mind. We can hardly hear the storm siren, so that wouldn’t do us much good if they did try to alert us. If anyone has one of them, let me know if you do and if you like it. I need a little piece of mind, and I think it will definitely come in handy this year.
See that fence behind the downed willow? Yeah, that’s us. This is from the storm last fall. The owner took the rest of the tree down this spring. It was such a big pretty willow tree.
Hubby and I were talking about the weather last night. We were a little freaked out that the tornado watch was out until 1am (while we would be sleeping, as you said). We mostly got rain and winds last night but saw on the news all the hail in peoples yards. The big thing for me is that it has been so damn gray and gloomy for over a week now and it is supposed to be this way through atleast Tuesday. Its depressing. Glad you didnt get any real damage. Crossing my fingers for brighter days!
I think you can get a NOAA radio at Walmart or maybe somewhere like Best Buy or Radio Shack. They shouldn’t be hard to find.
Yesterday we had baseball sized hail and a tornado about 20 minutes away, and we don’t even live in an area where tornados are supposed to happen. Crazy!
Gosh, what is a storm siren?
Oh wow! Yea, we’ve had wonky weather, too, this year. I think we skipped spring and went from a dreadful winter to a hot hot summer already! I’m not looking forward to the heat…
The weather is crazy this year – we have had more rain here than we’ve had in 60+ years, and it’s HOT HOT HOT – the next 4 days we are under a heat advisory, 90+ degree weather! This poor planet of ours, is going nuts…
That sounds just like our weather last year. It was one storm after another all spring and summer, and if you remember, we even lost a tree due to lightning too. This year had been pretty calm so far, and I hope it stays that way.
I must say, yoyr cooler weather does sound nice to me. I don’t know why I live in TX; I hate the heat.
Just last month, on Mother’s Day morning at around 5:00 or so in the morning, my city was hit with SEVERAL tornadoes. It was THE most frightening thing to be bolted out of bed by the storm sirens…we have them at all of our local fire stations, and they sound if a tornado has been spotted. So, I, without even fully realizing why, shot out of bed that morning as soon as I heard them. My husband and daughter could sleep through five tornadoes, hurricanes, and a typhoon! I went straight for the television, and turned on our local news. I woke everyone up, and we huddled together with the TV up loud enough to hear. Many of my co-workers slept through it all because so many of the power lines were down and the sirens apparently do not work when the electricity is off (I know, brillant, right?!) We lost several days of school because schools were damaged and without power for days. When all was said and done, they declared our city a disaster area with damage in the millions…right now FEMA is working with local business and home owners to settle insurance claims. We were SO blessed not to have any damage at out house, but two of my students are now homeless. No one in our area died, so despite all of the damaged, we are just really blessed. Severe weather is nothing to play around with, and I think a weather radio is a PERFECT idea! Also, having a clear plan of what to do in case of any emergency like that. I know my husband and I plan on getting a weather radio too, and making a plan. Hope things get better for you!
By the way, enjoy the cooler temps- we are having a HEAT wave right now- 98 degrees each day this week. The WORST thing about our heat is the humidity…so hot it is hard to breathe. Yikes. Stay cool and safe 🙂
Oh dear, such scary weather! I hope everyone is safe and the bad weather passes soon!
You know, I totally agree the weather is whacked. It might be hot and seem summer like down here, but the wind blows and blows and never seems to stop. It’s really terrible, and hard to acomplish much outside.
I’d send you some of our warmth if I could. I hope the weather stays moderate though and all those storms leave you safe and sound.
We can get some wicked weather in our southern neck of the woods, too. It was really scary when we literally lived in the woods away from civilization. Hey, I’ll gladly share my daily 99F temp with you. We skipped spring here.
We have a weather radio…it’s a Midland. I really like it. It lives on the nightstand and lets me know if there’s danger in the night.
It was cooler than normal here for a long time, and then BAM, it was summer. One day it was 73 and breezy, the next it was 95 and super humid but dry as a bone. *sigh*