Deadly Texas Tornado Caused Non-Gas Related Call To My Mom & Dad

As I sit here looking at my computer monitor we are coming up on 4 in the afternoon of the day after a killer tornado wreaked havoc a few miles southwest of my location.

As you can see, via looking at the sky above the turquoise body of water I see when I look out my south facing windows, no dangerous clouds appear to be presenting any sort of dire threat at this current point in time.

The sky above still appeared to be a bit threatening when I went swimming in that turquoise body of water early this morning.

At my location last night's storm consisted of some noisy thunder, some rain in downpour mode and a burst or two of wind. No tornado sirens were heard.

Due to it being a rough night, last night, I was not in the mood to drive anywhere to get myself some salubrious endorphin inducing aerobic stimulation. Instead I walked to Albertsons because I needed vinegar.

On the way back from Albertsons I reached for my phone to call my mom and dad because they always think I may have been twisted aloft whenever they hear tornadoes have struck the D/FW zone.

As I pulled my phone out of its pocket it started singing its incoming call song. I thought it was likely my mom calling, but I was wrong. It was Connie D. The Tacoma version of Connie D., not the Fort Worth version.

I sat at a picnic table and had a long talk with Connie D. We had some much needed itinerary discussing to do regarding my upcoming visit to the Pacific Northwest.

After Connie D. was done with me I finally called my mom and dad. Mom answered.  Mom always answers. I don't think mom lets dad answer the phone.

They'd consulted maps trying to figure out where the deadly Granbury tornado area was in relation to my location.

During the course of talking to my mom mom  asked if I'd been invited to a wedding taking place this coming July 6. I said I had not heard of any wedding. Mom then told me the details of this wedding. I then told mom I was shocked, shocked I tell you, that I have not been invited to this.

Well, I was unnecessarily shocked. Just minutes ago I got email from the member of the wedding party to whom I am related, informing me of the event, asking if I want to go, saying "I can send you a real invite if you are interested.  Lemme know. I know how you love family events, so I thought I’d give you fair warning instead of just sending it."

I do love a family event. Let's see, the last family event I went to of the wedding sort was way back in April of 2006. That went well, sort of, but eventually went totally off the rails due to the absurdly obnoxious antics of the relative some of us now call BS.

I can't help but wonder if BS will be at this wedding? I suspect not. I have said previously I will never subject myself to BS again, not ever, if I can help it. And usually I can....

Watching For Tornadoes From The Swimming Pool This Morning In Texas

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center has issued a tornado watch this morning. The temperature has taken a big upswing, as in it's in the mid 70s coming up on 7am, which is when the tornado watch expires. It is being a bit gusty out there. So far I've heard no tornado sirens.

Since we are having a heat wave I'm going to ignore my therapist, Dr. L.C.'s, diagnoses of serious derangement being in play for me to continue going swimming in what the doctor believes to be frigid, unswimmable water.

An incoming tornado matches my mood this morning. I think I mentioned that yesterday I changed the DNS settings so that my websites can move to my new webhost. Well, this morning I did a WHOIS check and learned one of the name server's IP address had been entered incorrectly. I sent off a support ticket, set to urgent. I'm sure it will be quickly fixed. But it's aggravating.

I can't wait to see what fresh hell today is going to be.

Tornado Warnings & Tandy Hills Park

It is a bit past 3 this Saturday afternoon in Fort Worth. About a half hour ago a thunderstorm started up with heavy rain and wind. The NWS Storm Prediction Center has issued 5 Alerts since 11:15 am---one Thunderstorm Alert, two Flood Alerts and two Tornado Alerts.

We are being very alert here.

Prior to the storm I went to Tandy Hills Park to get in some high humidity hiking. I was surprised to see the lady you see in the picture, painting the landscape. Last week, during the Prairie Fest, there seemed to be dozens of landscape painters. Today was the first time I saw a non-Prairie Fest landscape painter at the Tandy Hills.

There were more people hiking the Tandy Hills today than I've ever seen before, except on Prairie Fest day. Towards the end of today's hike a light rain started up. That felt good due to the high humidity making hiking like being in a mild steam bath. On the return pass by the landscape painter she was hurriedly packing up to get out of the rain.

I saw a new wildflower today.

And I saw something disturbing. Someone had removed the Tandy Hills Shrine, up by the Fort Worth Space Needle. A lot of work went into building that shrine. It'll be hard to rebuild because a lot of litter has been removed from the park.

When I got back here, because of that hot, humidity thing, getting in the pool seemed like a good idea, even though it was raining and even though I'd already done my early morning swim.

The lightning continues to strike and the thunder to boom. But it seems to be letting up. For awhile there it was being so wild I was expecting to hear the tornado sirens. But all I heard was pounding rain and thunder booms.

Recording Breaking Texas Temperatures & Tornadoes

We hit 83 degrees yesterday, breaking the temperature record here in Fort Worth. Overnight, a cold front blew in, chilling us down to a bit under 60, Saturday morning, at 10. With heavy rain, at times. That's my view of this morning's biggest downpour in the photo. The rain overwhelmed the gutters.

Earlier this morning the National Weather Service issued a Tornado Watch Warning for North Texas. So far I've heard no Tornado Sirens.

Much of the rest of the country is covered by snow. The Puget Sound zone is in thaw mode now, with the avalanche danger extremely high. Elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, specifically, Portland, had record breaking snow reaching almost 2 feet. Rain is more the norm for Portland in winter.

As far as I know, Snowzilla still stands in Anchorage. While in Seattle, it appears that a Seattle Snowzilla has grown in front of the Space Needle.

If it had remained balmy, my intention today was to go swimming in Lake Grapevine. Last week Lake Grapevine was being crystal clear. When that lake is not crystal clear I will not get into it, due to some of the things that lurk underwater. Like garfish and snapping turtles. I was attacked, in July of 2002, by a mad snapping turtle in Lake Grapevine. I think it was the closest I've ever come to a heart attack. I thought it was a water moccasin when the head popped up in front of me. It was only after I'd safely reached shore that I saw that it was a snapping turtle that was terrorizing me.

With this inclement weather I may have to somewhat alter my Saturday walking plans. Currently I intend to go to Southlake Costco for my regular Saturday lunch of free samples, then go walking at one of the Lake Grapevine parks, then go to Sprouts Farmers Market. These plans could be drastically altered should tornadoes make an appearance.

Texas Tornado Hail Storm Video

On April 17, 2008 we had ourselves a fairly hellacious storm here in the Dallas/Fort Worth zone of Texas. This was the storm I whined about because it sent the local TV weather guys into non-stop all night long yammering. So, I didn't get to watch Survivor. The storm that had the weather guys in such a dither did not produce a tornado. Six days later another bad storm came along, once more during TV prime time. But this time the local TV did not go into Weather Drama Queen Mode. Yet that storm did produce a tornado which destroyed 4 homes in Crowley. Crowley is a suburb south of Fort Worth.

Back to the April 17 storm. There are these guys who are Tornado Chasers. They have a website called Tornadovideos.net. These guys were in their Storm Chase Vehicle near Weatherford, in the heart of the storm.

Watch the Tornado Chaser's video below and you will see just how hellacious these Texas storms are. At the start the Tornado Chasers are driving through the hail. Eventually they have to stop. The guys get out of their Storm Chase Vehicle and one gets whacked on the head by incoming hail. The hail keeps getting bigger and bigger til it's baseball size. The giant hail cracks their windshield. By the time the hail stops falling the ground is thickly covered with big hail balls that make it look like there has been a big snowfall.

Yet One More Storm in Texas

A bit over a week ago we had a bad storm here that resulted in one injury. A man lost his arm due to his trailer being tossed around by a tornado. As night began to arrive last night we had another storm here in North Texas. Last week's storm, for the most part, was in the wee hours of the morning. I do not know if all the local channels broke into regular programming to warn those sleeping to get up and worry.

But last night a bit before 7pm I turned on the TV to watch Survivor to see the CBS 11 Weather guy in full arm waving mode over a possible tornado cell over the town of Weatherford, about 30 miles west of Fort Worth. I channel chased to the other local stations and they were all in full Weather Drama Queen Mode.

Regular programming pretty much did not return last night. By morning the headline was "Storms hit North Texas with hail and high water". A follow up article in another section's headline was "Hailstorm rumbles through N. Texas". This article mentioned the baseball size hail that fell in some areas. The article in the morning paper certainly did not match up with the overwrought ridiculously over done repetitive over the top absurd alarmist coverage on TV the night before.

What follows are screencaps of the storm coverage. Coverage that went on way way way longer than the 20-30 minute storm that people experienced. I wonder how many people have sore backs this morning from following the Drama Queen's earnest advice to get to a safe spot, like a bathtub?


The Weather guy above is the Channel 8 ABC Weather Guy. I find him the most annoying. He acts like he's covering the detonation of a nuclear bomb and advising people where to escape the fallout. On and on he and the others went last night over a rotating wall cloud that had the potential to turn into a tornado. When eventually one of their 'trained' tornado spotters called in to say he'd seen a possible tornado possibly touch down for a short time, well, the earnestness went into overboard.

The local tv stations put helicopters in the air in order to get live footage of the storm, such as you see above. It seems dangerous to me to risk lives to get footage like this. I guess they are hoping to catch a full blown tornado. I don't see what the above type info adds.

Above is the CBS channel 11 Weather Guy. His schtick is different than the ABC Guy's and almost as annoying. Very repetitive, I suppose in case you missed the last time he said how dangerous this storm is, the subsequent repeats might be useful. This Guy was amusing in many ways. One was due to using hand gestures to illustrate a rotating wall cloud.

One of the stupidest things about the CBS 11 coverage is the Guy advises you that you can also watch the same coverage on their sister station, which on Charter Cable happens to be Channel 12. Now, why not just put the weather coverage on 12 and run Survivor on 11 with the crawl across the bottom saying if you want weather info turn to Channel 12??

Above we see the Channel 5 NBC Weather Guy. I usually find Channel 5 the least annoying with the way they do dire weather programming interruptions.

Meanwhile, while all this weather drama is unfolding on all the local stations, with non-stop coverage due to their extremely important responsibility to provide this important life-saving information, over on Fox News they were discussing the previous night's debate between Hillary and Barack. I find it inexcusably irresponsible that the local Fox affiliate did not find a way to inform local viewers of Fox News of the extreme danger they were facing due to the incoming storm.

And on NBC's Bravo Channel 'Top Chef" was airing a new episode and did not have the decency to tell its viewers to stop watching and tune to one of the local stations where life saving information was being dispensed. None of the cable stations seem to care in the slightest about the welfare of their viewers, not CNN, not Turner Classic Movies, not MSNBC. Even The Learning Channel does not care to educate its viewers as to the impending danger. Surely, even though these are not local stations, a way could be found to save those who are not tuned into local broadcasters.

And then the storm finally got to my abode, sometime after 8pm. You can see lightning light up the night sky through my patio window above. The tornado sirens went off. Search lights scanned the sky. I suppose if I were totally unobservant, mentally deficient, deaf and maybe blind I would not know that a storm was coming. I would know this without the wall to wall non-stop local TV coverage. But if I were totally unobservant, mentally deficient, deaf and maybe blind, and in full need of the info the local TV was providing, how would I get it, being unobservant, mentally deficient, deaf and maybe blind?

Anyway, in case you can't tell, I find this local weather coverage to be completely stupid, a waste of money and possibly dangerous, scaring people to do things that are more likely to put themselves in danger than the actual storm, which incidentally turned out to be fairly minor. No confirmed tornadoes, no injuries. The main casualty was a night of regular programming killed by a bunch of unobservant, possibly mentally deficient, tone deaf, common sense blind Weather Drama Queens.

Why don't the local stations take turns being the one to cover the latest Bad Weather Episode, advising their listeners to tune into that Weather Episode's weather station? Think of the money saved. Think of the potential lives saved. Or better yet, why not a station dedicated to weather? Oh. There is one of those. Why not direct people there during stormy weather?

Top Chef was pretty good last night though. I loved the added light show and sound effects of the storm. I didn't lose power.

Thursday's Texas Tornado Aftermath

The Big Storm that roared through North Texas late Wednesday and in the wee hours of Thursday morning brought at least 5 tornadoes, including several that struck Breckinridge late Wednesday. Survey teams checked out the damage and issued the EF ratings for the tornadoes. 4 or more were EF1's. The assessment process continues. An EF1 tornado whips up winds between 86 and 110 mph.

So far the only known injury was to a Johnson County man who lost his arm when the trailer he was in was turned over and over in the high wind. In the photo you see here the trailer was spared, which totally goes against the norm, while the tied to a foundation building was badly damaged.

Several houses were seriously damaged in Johnson County.

About 5 miles north of my abode, in the town of Hurst, straight line winds up to 80mph damaged more than 200 homes.

At Oakland Lake Park, yesterday, I saw several trees blown down, including a long-lived Mulberry Tree. It was sort of additionally tragic because only a couple days ago did the park maintennance people finally get around to removing tree limbs they'd piled up all over the park last month after doing extensive tree trimming. And now they've got a way way worse mess to clean up.

I don't know if it's irony or what, but in Haltom City, that's about 5 miles northwest of where I am, students at an Institute of Massage were in the middle of their finals when Mother Nature massaged holes in the roof and blasted out windows, distracting the test takers. I don't quite understand why they were taking a massage test in the early morning of Thursday. Maybe the earlier storm hit just north of me and I didn't notice.

In Southlake, that's up by Lake Grapevine, the school board called an emergency meeting to figure out what do to about the damaged school building, with broken gas lines, ruined air conditioners and a destroyed stadium scoreboard. They decided to open school as usual, with no lunch, due to no gas.

Apartment buildings were damaged in Bedford, that's a little town next to Hurst, moving four families out til the damage can be repaired.

Today the sky is blue, the temps are warm. And I managed to sleep a couple hours.

Texas Wildflowers, Tornadoes & Polygamists

Mother Nature goes a bit nuts in Texas during April and May. The wildflowers are being extra colorful, or so it seems, this Spring. The bluebonnets are popping up all over. For the month, or so, when the wildflowers are blooming, it makes Texas look the best it looks the entire year. The other 11 months the basic color scheme on the ground in Texas is mostly brown. There are plenty of green trees though.

Today and tonight we are being blessed with Mother Nature's other thing she likes to do to Texas this time of year, that being Severe Thunderstorms with Tornado creation possible. It's 3pm and it's not started up yet, except for some raindrops.

I went to read Gar the Texan's MySpace blog this morning for my daily dose of West Texas Eruditeness and learned Gar the Texan is now blogging in a new location. His Blog is called Random Ramblings: The insane opinions of a lunatic. I think he's flattering himself, the opinions expressed didn't seem all that lunatic to me, let alone insane.

Gar the Texan's first and only posting on his new Blog is about religion, with his random rambling inspired by the current West Texas cult scandal. Basically it seems Gar the Texan has some issues with the Religion Industry. Likely, this being an issue for the boy, is due to him being raised in his own West Texas Fundamentalist Cult led by his mom. I'm pretty sure Gar the Texan's Cult was not a Polygamist one.

Speaking of the weird Texas Polygamist Compound scandal and the removal of all those kids, today I watched Fox news while consuming food and there was a story about a similar raid on similar polygamists in Arizona in what became known as the Short Creek Raid, taking place in 1953 in what is now called Colorado City.

In the Arizona raid 200 kids were taken from their mothers with the fathers being arrested. At gunpoint. Several of the Arizona kids who were taken, now in their 60s, told the Fox News reporter how the Short Creek Raid and its aftermath terrorized and traumatized them. When the fathers got out of jail there were forbidden to see their families. But, many of them managed to sneak in visits. With several wives ending up pregnant and having to hide the pregnancies and the newborns.

After several years passed, the families were allowed to be back together. With only one wife for each man.

First Texas Tornado Sirens of 2008

Yesterday, sometime around 3 in the afternoon, the Tornado Warning Sirens went off for the first time this year. There is always a little feeling of excitement when the sirens go off. WeatherBug had been going off with various warnings, like Severe Thunderstorms, Golf Ball size Hail in North Tarrant County (I live in Tarrant County, that's where Fort Worth is). And a Tornado Watch that lasted til 2am this morning.

When the Tornado Sirens go off and if you've not lost power you can usually find out from the TV where the Tornado is located. I've had 2 close calls since I've been at my current location. Both occurred in the late afternoon. With the first one it'd been stormy and windy for hours and then suddenly it got dark and the wind picked up. The sirens went off. Turned on the TV to see that a Tornado had touched down in Handley. That is about a mile south of my abode. The tornado was heading my direction. I was preparing to make a run for it when the Tornado turned east via the I-30 freeway and headed towards Dallas. I did not see the Tornado. All I saw was a big black cloud.

My second close call occurred about a year ago. I was at Oakland Lake Park, listening to the radio on my headphones. The Emergency Broadcast System broke in over and over again. When it was reported the line of storms had hit west Fort Worth I knew it was maybe time to head home. And then I started seeing lightning strikes east of downtown Fort Worth. I then realized the storm was moving faster than the reports. I hurried to my van and headed back here. I remember calling Lulu so she could hear the dramatic Emergency Broadcast warning messages. She answered her phone just in time to hear the warning say Tornadoes had been spotted.

By the time I got to my abode the Tornado Sirens were very loud. A forming Tornado passed right over where I live. I did not see this, but others did. All I knew was it was really loud. That particular Tornado touched down just north of my location and tossed around a lot of storage containers. It was a very minor Tornado.

Yesterday's storm quickly passed. The photo above was taken after the storm had passed my location. In the photo we are looking east towards Dallas. When I took this photo the radio was saying there were several rotating cells (tornadoes in the making) above Dallas, along with Hail and a Severe Thunderstorm. The most odd thing about yesterday's Thunderstorm was it created almost non-stop Thunder. But I only saw one Lightning Strike.