Posts Tagged ‘ weather ’

Summer Storms 2: Tornado Boogaloo 08 June 2008 at 6:46 pm by Jason 169 views

I wrote this on the forums last night at around 2:50 in the morning:

It’s now 2:56 AM, but I’ve been up since 2.  Why?  Tornadoes.  I hate this State.  The Tornado siren started going off and woke us up… “Hi there, Weather Channel!”:

Tornadoes Suck

So, supposedly a tornado just ripped the roof off of a Wal-Mart (or Target, they’re getting mixed reports) as well as destroying 1 (up to 3… mixed reports) houses that are a few streets away from us.  They’re not quite sure yet.

Yay.  Why don’t these things happen during the day?  I swear, it seems it’s been almost every night now for the past week.  Ugh.

Okay… it’s 3:00 now… maybe we can go to bed.  They said the Tornado Warning has expired… only Severe Thunderstorm Warnings now.  Wonderful.   :p

So, today Jess and I had a couple places to go and we decided to go check out the damage, if any.  Well, it turns out there was a tornado, it was an EF-2, and it missed our apartment by about 1.5 miles.  Yikes.  Here’s some pics from the news sites:

Tornado

Tornado

Tornado

Tornado

And here are a couple pics Jess and I took while out (note the “Wal-Mart is closed, sign… seems the tornado actually hit the store.  Also note the missing roof and walls of that carwash and the missing gas tank at the gas station):

Tornado

Tornado

Tornado

Tornado

The police had cordoned off the neighborhoods that were most destroyed and were only letting in those that lived there (good for them, I say!).  Anyway, I’m starting to hate the Mid-West… stupid tornadoes.

Oh!  One last bonus… all the wind and rain seemed to undo whatever they did to fix the roof and all last night we had to deal with “drip, drip, drip, drip” again.  While not as bad as what happened to everyone else, still quite an annoyance.



+ Kids today (get off my lawn!) By Jason 20 February 2008 at 7:47 am 132 views No Comments

Last night the National Weather Service issued a Wind Chill warning for Nebraska because the temperature (with wind chill) could reach a negative 30 degrees. After this warning went out, almost every school/function in the area declared they’d be closed today due to excessive cold. Excessive cold? A wind chill of negative thirty is excessive? Since when?!

Now, when I was a young kid in High School, I had the joy of living in North Dakota. One day we went to school and the wind chill was negative 80. That’s right… negative 80 degrees. We didn’t get the day off. In fact I recall waiting at the bus stop that morning thinking it was a bit cold out. I used to tell people this and they’d look at me as if I told them I also had a pet Jackalope. Well, the joke’s on them now! After doing some checking, look what I found (pdf):

DAMAGE: North Dakota remained under a wind chill advisory January 16 after an
Arctic storm that started the previous day brought winds of up to 50 miles per hour
and wind chills of 60 to 80 below. The N.D. Highway Patrol reported blowing snow
resulted in the closure of the following roadways: 1-29, from South Dakota to
Canada; I-94, from Montana to Minnesota; U.S. Highway 83, the northbound lane,
from Bismarck to Minot; and U.S. Highway 2, from Grand Forks to Lakota. The
Highway Patrol has since reopened U.S. Highway 83, I-94, I-29 and U.S. Highway 2.

County offices closed early, and classes were suspended January 15 in many North
Dakota schools as a result of the ninth snow storm of the season. Many school
superintendents have expressed concern about the number of school days missed
and are asking the Governor to forgive those missed days.

There… notice how it said “classes were suspended January 15 in many North
Dakota schools” and not “all North Dakota schools”? So just sayin’… negative 30 is nothing to shut down school for, especially if there’s no snow with it (did I mention it was also snowing that day back in 1997?). Sheesh… kids today!



+ You really light my fire! By Jason 14 February 2008 at 10:53 pm 216 views No Comments

Guess where we’ve been the past 2 hours? If you guessed “outside in the 10 degree (-3 w/ windchill) weather”, you’re right! We were all gathered up by the cops pounding on the door because there was a fire in the building. Turns out, similar to the last time this happened, it was a furnace (this time on the 2nd floor). The fire department let us back in, but they’re still downstairs trying to get it all taken care of. Here’s some pics:

Fire!

Fire!!

Fire!!!!

Fire!!!!!

The entire apartment smells like smoke now, we’re cold, Mishka is upset at being taken outside (we couldn’t get Kisa in time, sadly… yes, she’s okay, but she wouldn’t get out from under the bed!!). It’s very annoying. They’ve turned off the furnace and now one apartment is without heat (they’re moving the family). I really wish this complex would take care of their apartments instead of waiting for them to break down first.

In other news, aside from all this fun tonight, today was a great day. I bought Jess some flowers, we went out to dinner, it was just nice (until this). So, let’s leave you with a nice image, a cellphone pic of the bouquet I got for her!

Roses are red!

Until next time!



+ Thundersnow By Jason 01 March 2007 at 6:29 am 46 views No Comments

It’s been thundersnowing (blizzard + thunder & lightning) all morning. It looks like it’s gonna keep up for most of the day (it’s moving the direction of the arrow and I’m at the dot that says “Omaha”):

Blizzard of Oz

It’s times like this that I wish work was like school and I’d get the day off. ;)