The storm clouds roll.... 'Til The Storm Passes By
In the dark of the midnight have I oft hid my face,
While the storm howls above me, and there's no hiding place.
'Mid the crash of the thunder, Precious Lord, hear my cry,
Keep me safe till the storm passes by.
Till the storm passes over, till the thunder sounds no more,
Till the clouds roll forever from the sky;
Hold me fast, let me stand in the hollow of Thy hand,
Keep me safe till the storm passes by.
~ Mosie Lister, 1958
Then the promise......
"Mild arch of promise! on the evening sky
Thou shinest fair with many a lovely ray,
Each in the other melting."
~ Robert Southey
Then the reward...... 
"The sunrise is Gods greeting - the sunset, his signature." ~ Unknown
Storms have blossomed each afternoon all week. They appear almost out of nowhere, with wind, flashes of lightening, and booming thunder before the downpours. An inch one day, a tenth the next... nine tenths the next. Slow moving, flash flooding, and still the humidity does not break. A cold front stretches, lazily languishes across the area... asleep. And the storms keep developing. I don't have to water the grass, but the cats hide each day, afraid of the sounds of pounding rain and rolling thunder. Still, after the clouds move on to the ocean... a promise appears in the eastern sky.... a rainbow. Then later, with clouds and storms to the north and south, the setting sun delivers a magnificent masterpiece to the end of the day.
This was July 6th, 2011.
(end of post)
Nature's Notes
Skywatch Friday
Not an evening to be on the golf course..... "The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground." ~ Herman Melville (American Novelist from Moby Dick. 1819-1891)
OK, so the evening was not as dramatic as fighting the huge white whale, but it was unusual to say the least. It was hot today... again... and humid, again. We had a chance of thunderstorms but until 5 PM, nothing really looked like it would materialize. Then the clouds rolled in and darkened and thickened up. Lightning was seen in the distance and a very mild rolling thunder. On radar, it seemed that red and yellow on green was popping up all around us, but here.. on the little "x" representing our house, it was cloudy but not dark. We moved a few plants to shelter and secured several loose objects and a few sprinkles started and just as quickly stopped. We were in a proverbial doughnut hole... storms to the east, west, north and south, but none overhead.
Then around 7:30 the doughnut seemed to start collapsing all around... a reported tornado over near Oceana and a thunderstorm warning.... but it came right when the skies seemed to be starting to clear. Then quickly it began to rain.. big droplets, then more and thunder and lightning in the north and east with a wall cloud dropping down. The winds blew rain from the east, then from the north and west and the local weathermen began to notice circulation in the clouds right over our area. The trees in the preserve were bent over, thankfully away from the house. Sustained winds lifted the hot tub cover partially off and started moving one of the deck chairs around. It rained over an inch in the span of a half an hour and Virginia Beach received even more... almost 5 inches. The wind blown rain worked its way into the brick and a small drip in the sunroom started and then stopped just as quickly.
The rain and wind stopped and we breathed a sigh of relief... Daisy took quite a while to calm down and stop trembling. The biggest casualty was my bird feeder system. I should have taken the individual feeders off, but didn't think about it and the wind bent it over into the rose garden and snapped the metal pole off about 18 inches out of the ground. Bird seed is everywhere and one of the roses is broken, but will survive. I didn't look at the rest of the flowers, but most on the patio were fine. Our neighbors had a tree branch fall and hit their back fence and it broke one section out but I think that is the only tree down back in our little nook.
We had another round of rousing lightning fireworks and thunder with rain come through a bit later, but thankfully, without the wind. Stephen wanted to view a storm from the sunroom, but I don't think he had one this bad in mind. Now, perhaps my personal meteorologist, Nyssa, could explain exactly what this doughnut thing was all about....
PS: There were some crazy golfers out on the course while the wall cloud with lightning got closer and closer. Some people have more passion for golf than sense.
(end of post)
Skywatch Friday Post
May 13, 2009.. Ponca City, Oklahoma Tornado
Picture by Nyssa.
(Click to enlarge) "Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" ~ Edward N. Lorenz
My daughter has become a free spirit, majoring in both English and Geology at William and Mary; now getting a masters degree in meteorology and going on for a doctorate.. well, in something related to both. In May, she took a two week course in storm chasing. Nyssa and seven other grad students along with two professors took off in the Mississippi State University van and headed to the state of her birth... Oklahoma. Other students, parents and the universe in general could follow their escapades on the MSU Storm Chase site. First there was a little grumbling about the much hyped Weather Channel Vortex2 project... there were going to be too many chasers... they have so much equipment and we don't.... the roads are going to be crammed with vans and trucks from this. But as it turned out... this was a very slow May for tornadoes in "tornado alley".
Nyssa called about a few near miss sightings and unusual cloud formations... but no tornadoes. They drove through Oklahoma to Texas and back again.. eventually traversing Kansas, Nebraska and up into Colorado. The web site had a handy GPS tracking map that showed where they were in real time.
They evaluated their maps and computer print outs and forecast predictions and decided to set up shop in Ponca City, Oklahoma for a couple of days. Meanwhile, the Vortex2 groups and Mike Bettis from the Weather Channel headed west, far west to Clinton, Oklahoma and the panhandle of Texas in search of the elusive tornado. Then, finally, on Wednesday, May 13th, I received a text message.... "MOM!!! I just chased my FIRST tornado... COOL!!!" Pictures and a video appeared on the website later that evening.
Now, I must tell all grad student storm chasers out there... it is not a good idea to video a tornado chase with the sound on.... you could cause your parents great harm; especially when they hear..."Wow, look it's headed right for us!" Don't blog that, please!!! Another thing... it probably isn't the greatest idea to pose for a picture with the tornado still in the background... that doesn't help a mother's heart either.
May 13, 2009.. Ponca City, Oklahoma Tornado
Picture by Nyssa.
Nyssa survived.. they all survived, they even had a mention on the Weather Channel one evening. I noticed the group was in Alliance, Nebraska and so was Mike Bettis when he came on with his update, and said.."You never know who you'll run into out here. Today, I met up with a group of grad students from Mississippi State in MacDonald's and they showed me their pictures and video of the Ponca City tornado. All I could do was stand there and cry..." You see.. the Vortex2 group with all its huge equipment and sophisticated trucks had miscalculated that day... they went west when they should have gone north, and they missed this tornado that day.
So, with Nyssa's help... she took the pictures and I cleaned them up... this is my Skywatch Friday submission for this week and I leave you with this alternate scale for evaluating the strength of tornadoes... do you think it will replace the Fujita Scale anytime soon?
Moojita Scale
M0 Tornado - Cows in an open field are spun around parallel to the wind flow and become mildly annoyed.
M1 Tornado - Cows are tipped over and can't get up.
M2 Tornado - Cows begin rolling with the wind.
M3 Tornado - Cows tumble and bounce.
M4 Tornado - Cows are AIRBORN.
M5 Tornado - S T E A K ! ! !
Addendum: Shutterday photo this week was weather and this was definitely WEATHER!
(end of post)
Into each construction project, a little rain must fall.
(Click picture to enlarge) "Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale under-side of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest--fst! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know." ~ Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Stormy weather...severe warnings... and rain... lots of rain. This was a frightening storm that came up suddenly. Framing on our addition was in full swing... and this stopped the carpenters dead in their tracks. Outside work... near a golf course.. not a good idea and best left to another day.
Fast forward three weeks to yesterday... the day was spent pouring and leveling the concrete patio base, a new porch and sidewalk. The men finished about 6 PM and I left the windows in the garden room open, thinking to leave them open all night. Then came the scroll at the bottom of the television... severe thunderstorm warning... but not here, north and east...it should miss us according to the radar...but, better close the windows anyway. So, windows closed at 9:15 PM... 9:45 PM, a loud clap of thunder... just one... and the skies opened, dumping hard rain for 20 minutes... again confirming our contractor's belief...."Let me pour concrete... it will rain in a desert... every time."
Mark Twain said it perfectly...
See more skies... hopefully sunny... at Skywatch Friday.
(end of post)
Virginia sky at dusk.
(Click picture to enlarge) "The sky is that beautiful old parchment in which the sun and the moon keep their diary." ~ Alfred Kreymborg, Old Manuscript
These are the clouds most people love... those fluffy whipped cream clouds that catch the rays of a setting sun and splatter them all over the earth in shades of red and yellow and purple. These clouds would never send shooting daggers of lightning or echo with rolling thunder... no, they are pleasant little clouds.. shading us during the day and frolicking across the sky at night. It hasn't rained for four days now... the construction guys love it this way.. still, we could use a few more of the gray clouds with rain... especially since the windows are in the new addition. Until then... these soft sunsets are beautiful and look.... a large bird soars up with the air drafts.. perhaps a hawk or an eagle... perhaps.
This shot is for SkyWatch Friday and Carmi's theme for the week is "cloudy".
(end of post)
"God's glowing covenant." ~ Hosea Ballou
(Click picture to enlarge) "We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter." ~ Mark Twain
When we came out of Ruby Tuesday's this evening it began to sprinkle. A small gray cloud was overhead but barely hiding the sun. It is only a short distance to our house... less than two miles, but by the time we drove half-way there... the skies opened and it poured and poured and poured. We remained in the car, parked in our driveway for five minutes and slowly the sun came out in the west shining on the departing storm clouds and across the sky this beautiful rainbow began to form. I didn't catch it at its best... but such beauty leaves me in awe.... every time.
It was a perfect shot for SkyWatch Friday.
(end of post)
A cloudy sky through open rafters...June 4th
(Click to enlarge) "Wafted up,
The stealing cloud with soft grey blinds the sky
And in its vapory mantle onward steps
The summer shower."
~ Alfred Billings Street
There is a story behind this picture.. actually, it is an evolving saga of trauma and turmoil, excitement and fear, dump trucks, cement trucks, men in baggy shorts with tool belts and nail guns, footers and headers, and a plethora of mud and goop... but I really don't have time or space to go into it all right now. Let's just say that this was the view out one of our back doors yesterday morning... before the storms rolled in and the skies opened, dumping buckets of rain and ending work for the day. Today, the rain and wind held off until they were finished... and now this view is totally framed in and gone.
This is my first SkyWatch Friday entry and I am late... but I had other duties today... relating to this view...if you must know! Sigh... I need to go to bed with a good book.
(end of post)
