What a switch in weather I have this weekend. Spring has been here for weeks and it couldn't be more beautiful here in Austin, Tx. But today! augh a nasty cold front has decided to flub up Easter weekend and it is raining and cold and reports are threatening a FREEZE! Can you believe it?
I am all for a thunderstorm and as always am on the lookout for my first sighting of a tornado. Do you guys have a list for things you want to see and do before you checkout for that big vacation in the sky? I have only one thing on my list and it is to see a tornado. I'm not sure why exactly it is so important for me to see this dangerous natural phenomenon. When I was a kid I was terrified of being caught in any sort of bad weather. I can remember being very small - perhaps 4 or 5 years old and living in Gruver, Tx a block away from my grandparents. It could be my imagination cooking up images from stories I've been told but I seem to recall walking (or being carried by my dad) across the street in the dark to the house my grandparents lived in which has a basement. A very scary basement. Even to this day I can come up with a thousand reasons not to go down there. The only other thing I can remember about that night is sitting around in a circle with my parents, my grandparents and a few other neighbors in dim light most likely candle powered and I was SCREAMING and crying. I wouldn't have known to be so scared except by what other people were saying about the situation so I have to place the blame on the adults that were there. My grandmother tends to be real dramatic about the weather so
I assume that is where I get it. The storm passed in the night and I don't know what kind of damage the town suffered but I remember that the electricity was out for at least a day if not more. My terror for tornadoes may have subsided a little as I grew a little older but then my dad hammered the last nail in the coffin when I was a teenager by creating a whole new facet of weather danger to fear. By this time we were living in Dalhart, Tx. There was a utility closet in the back of the house which had a covered opening leading under the house. I never saw what was actually in the hole but one day dad crawled underneath there and came out all dirty with cobwebs hanging from his hair (again, probably more imagination than truth) and proclaimed that were we as a family to be in danger of a tornado then under the house into the tomb of terror we would go to hide. Nothing could have scared me more and from that point on I watched the clouds, I watched the news. I became an expert on weather patterns, what ingredients were necessary to create a supercell storm cloud. I knew every county in the Texas Panhandle by site. I used hook echo and dry line in everyday conversation. And when I heard even the lowest rumble of thunder I would get clammy and nervous, unable to sleep until the news had cleared me from certain death by tornado or claustrophobia.
Eventually I became less terrified and more entranced by the power of thunderstorms and tornadoes. Do you have any understanding of what enormous organization must occur for an anvil shaped supercell to form? A dance between positive and negative energy, warm and cold air, unstable atmosphere and how much moisture is coming up from the gulf. And so I was bitten by the weather bug and for 10 years now I have been on a quest that sometimes borders on dangerous obsession to come in contact with a tornado. I have driven on many a country road blaring Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (great thunderstorm soundtrack) risking hail damage and high winds to see a funnel coming down from the sky. And to this day all my efforts have been in vain but each spring I think "Is this the year?"
And so those are my thoughts on this rainy day in Austin - which I intended to be a post about the going's on for the past few weeks but instead turned out to be why I am a nerd and a secret closet meteorologist.
