storms

someone pointed out to me the other day that i have nothing positive to say about Texas. don't get me wrong, there are some things i like in Texas. the bbq is amazing, the fact that they have seasons is pretty cool, and then there are some weather phenomenons that happen here that i haven't experienced anywhere else. one of those phenomenon things happened last Friday. 

the weather last Friday was predicted to be seasonably hot - around 99 with the heat index pushing 106. no showers were predicted but it was supposed to be quite humid (hence heat index). 

i was at work and i thought i would try to get out of there around 5:30pm. at about 4:30pm i looked outside and noticed that it had gotten significantly darker. since my wonderful 1998 Jimmy doesn't have a working driver's side windshield wiper (thanks to a garbage can lid on the highway), i decided it was time to pack up and get out of there. i should have moved faster, because i missed my window.

about 15 minutes later i looked outside and it seriously looked like those news pictures of a hurricane. you know the ones - where the news guy is standing with the ocean behind him and the waves are crashing and the tree is blowing so hard that the top is touching the ground and the wind is pelting rain at the camera lens so you can barely see what you are supposed to be looking at? yeah... that one. without a windshield wiper, i wasn't going anywhere.

now storms in the south can last for about 30 minutes but most of the summer storms we get only last about 15 minutes, especially the strong ones. not this one. about 5:30 the thunder and lightening started. the office had a 15 second power outage. the rain kept coming. and then the fire trucks came. the power outage triggered some a/c unit which triggered the alarm and now yours truly (aka the admin/HR/maintenance/facilities manager) was walking around the fire fighters trying to show them that yes, we were fine. 

around 6:30 the storm had died down enough for me to head outside to my car. the rain was now a soft drizzle and as long as i drove as far away from the big trucks as possible, i knew i could get home safely. i headed out and this is where the coolest part happened... 

i pull out onto the highway and looked to my right (to the south). there are no buildings there (instead it's old DFW runways) but you could see the storm. you could actually see the heavy dark ominous storm clouds and the lightening bolts and the rain coming down - and all of this was at least 20 miles away! and then i looked to my left (to the north) where there was sun and a few scattered clouds. if you didn't look at the ground or see the tree branches hanging off the trees by a couple of leaves, you would have thought it was just a typical summer day. 

i wish i had my camera with me and i wish i could have taken a picture to capture the awe of it all. the sight of this huge storm cloud just moving further and further away was beautiful. and to be able to see the cloud surrounded by calm, dry, sunny weather was a sight that is hard to describe in words.

storms like this make us realize how small we really are in the grand scheme of things. the power that mother nature has is amazing. being in a state which is very flat, you can see that power. in San Francisco, you don't get to see the storm roll in and then still see it when it's 20 miles away. if you are high enough (maybe Twin Peaks or Pat Wipf's old house on 21st Street) you can sometimes see the fog roll in and settle on top of the city. but you can't see the monstrous storm clouds that just drenched downtown head over to the Peninsula and drench the Hillsborough mansions. the glorious hills that i miss so dearly prevent that.

but in the flat lands of Texas, you can definitely see those clouds coming and going. which is a good thing, especially for those tornadoes... right?