A Stormy Thursday In Texas With Ruts At Quanah Parker Park

You're looking at a stormy, possible tornado spawning, 1pm view of today's Texas sky, looking east towards Dallas, standing on the parking lot of the Eastchase Super Wal-Mart.

The series of storms has hit worse in locations other than mine. All I've experienced is a little wind and temperature fluctuations.

This morning we were headed towards 80. And then the front from the north pushed back the front from the south, in the storm equivalent of a Civil War battle, dropping the temperature to currently being 60.

It's the confrontation between HOT and COLD that brings about a tornado watch.

While all this weather battling was going on, since none of it was producing falling water, I went to nearby Quanah Parker Park to walk off some of my morning's aggravations.

Quanah Parker Park is a nice, little, well-maintained, Fort Worth park. Today I was appalled to see what looked like the sort of ruts Barnett Shale gas drillers leave in their wake at times. Quanah Parker Park borders the Trinity River, but I saw no pipelines running to a pump by the Trinity River.

I suspect the Quanah Parker Park ruts were caused by some lawn mowing City of Fort Worth workers who did not realize they were mowing on very wet ground, making a big mess in the process.

Sunday Night Sky In Texas With Cockroaches

In the picture you are looking at Sunday night's stormy view from Miss Puerto Rico's balcony at a bit before 7 this evening. A dangerous looking sky, but with no lightning and no funnel clouds.

Those may come later. We are in for a bumpy ride the next few days in North Texas, if the forecast is to be believed.

Upside, the rain has cleaned up the air. I should not be seeing any Level Orange Air Pollution Alerts in the coming days. So, I can breathe a bit easier and leave my gas mask at home when I venture out.

It was nice, tonight, to be able to sit outside and watch the passing cloud parade without dealing with air that is too warm. It is only 70 right now, coming up on 9. Not quite BRRRR territory, but getting close. A good night's sleep should be had, with no A/C cycling on and off, windows open, no Orange Level stuff penetrating my breathing space.

All I have to deal with, at the moment, is the cockroach invasion. Which I learned tonight has become epidemic in the neighborhood. I don't mind the little beasts too much. I have mine pretty much under control. For the most part. There are a few rogue roaches, but they work alone and are easily dispatched.

I Did Not Get Struck By Lightning While Swimming This Morning

A cold front was supposed to bring me a storm last night. That didn't happen. But, this morning the cold front has arrived. It is only 69 out there at half past 8 in the morning.

On my way down to the pool, a little before the crack of dawn, I thought I saw flashes in the distance. But I heard no rumbling. And it was not very cloudy.

I was about 10 minutes into the pool when dawn began to reverse itself with the sky growing dark. Then it got very windy. Still, no visible lightning, no thunder. Then the power went out, making it suddenly darker and a lot quieter, due to the lack of power shutting off the noisy fountain and waterfall.

About 15 minutes after the power went out the storm moved into my neighborhood. The lightning strikes were still about 5 miles away, but I started to think maybe it was time to get out of the water. I've been wary of combining water with lightning ever since I saw a building burn due to a lightning strike a few weeks ago.

So, I got out of the water. The power came back on at the same time the lightning was directly overhead. That seemed odd. One strike was earth shakingly close.

The National Weather Service has issued a Flood Watch Alert. I suspect this may have some flood weary Haltom City people staying home to keep an eye on their creeks.

North Texas Storms, Earthquakes, Sprouts & Insomnia

Go here for the latest Cleburne Quakes.

I have had myself a rough past 36 hours, give or take an hour or two. The night before, I had a bad insomnia bout after being chased by Jabba the Hut in a nightmare.

I was stuck inside most of yesterday, unable to swim, due to a shocked pool, unable to hike or bike, due to a big Thunderstorm dropping a lot of water.

Last night Jabba the Hut left me alone, but Mother Nature did not. There were way too many flashing lights and explosions during the night. And downpours. That got me worrying about those long-suffering creek dwellers in Haltom City. I've not heard from the chief of the creek dwellers today. That is unusual, so I'm concerned.

Yesterday at 3:06 in the afternoon we were hit with another earthquake here in North Texas, where earthquakes used to be extremely rare, til recently.

There have been thousands of holes drilled in the ground in North Texas in the past several years. These holes are drilled so this material called shale can be shattered by a process called fracking. Yes, basically solid rock, underneath us, is being shattered.

And now there are earthquakes. Which used to be very very rare here. It seems sort of intuitive that there might be a connection between shattering a layer of the earth and the earth quaking.

Yesterday's quake was a puny 2.8 magnitude on the Richter Scale. The quake was centered about a mile west of Cleburne. Cleburne is a town outside the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, about 30 miles south of my location, about 12 miles south of Kelly Clarkson's hometown of Burleson. Several people reported hearing a loud boom and feeling the ground rumbling.

My one longtime reader may guess that, due to today being Wednesday, I likely had to go up to Southlake and, in doing so, I likely went to Sprouts Farmers Market. That guess would be correct. You can see how stormy it was up at Sprouts in the picture above, that was taken at noon.

Due to the storming I was up really early today, the pool is now un-shocked, so I was in it when the sun tried to break through the clouds. Swimming was a good thing, but I still feel beat up. I'm hoping for peace and quiet tonight, with no earthquakes and no earplug piercing thunder. And please, no Jabba the Hut.

The Texas Clouds are Booming & Pete Delkus is Twittering

That was what the sky looked like today around noon, up at Sprouts Farmers Market in Southlake. By the time I left Sprouts thunder was booming. As I headed south I was in a downpour, but I got ahead of the rain, barely, by the time I got back here.

The clouds today are the strangest thing I've seen above me in Texas since I saw a Space Shuttle streak across the night sky.

The clouds and rain caught up me with soon after I got back here. About an hour later I was consuming lunch when lightning started up, with several hits directly above me. It has been booming ever since.

So, I turn on the TV and see that all the local TV stations are in Heavy Duty Weather Drama mode. The most dramatic of the local Weather Drama Queens is this guy on WFAA, that's the ABC affiliate, named Pete Delkus. He gets way too earnest about these storms. It's one of my few pet peeves. I figure if you are watching TV, you are safely out of harm's way.

If a tornado cell has formed then I figure it is a legit thing to tell people if they are in that cell's location, to seek a safe place. But what they do instead is if there is a storm brewing, or moving, the Weather Drama Queens will interrupt regular programming to repeat what you've been reading crawling across the bottom of the screen over and over again.

That crawl will run and run. And then stop, replaced with a Weather Warning in an upper corner of the screen. Then there'll be a beep or a buzz and the crawls starts up again. And then they break in, first with an annoying announcement that they are breaking in, which takes up time. If the announcement is so damn important why not get right to it?

So, this afternoon Pete Delkus is pointing out the various storms and the direction they are heading and at which speed. Then he points to Tarrant County and says it is drizzling slightly there with the thunderstorms yet to arrive. I hear this as I see bright flashes, hear loud booms and watch a lot of falling water. And I am in Tarrant County.

Such is the high quality of our weather reporting.

Oh, another thing. At the end of Pete Delkus' Weather Warning Report he said he'll be twittering throughout the storm, so you can keep updated on the ongoing storm by going to Pete's TV Station, WFAA, Twitter page. You'll have to join Twitter first before you get to read Pete's weather tweetering. For me, I think I'll just get my weather info by looking out the window.

Pete Delkus is in Wikipedia. You can read all about him.

We're Storming in North Texas Today

A couple hours ago WeatherBug went off with a warning of incoming. Then the radio said a powerful storm was advancing on the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex from the north. And was moving fast. At that point in time the sky was mostly clear with little wind.

A couple minutes later, though it was totally calm, the power went out. And stayed out for quite awhile. By the time the power came back on, the storm was here. Cloudy and very windy. But the power stayed on.

The best part of this storm is it had been hot, as in it'd gotten to 90 this morning. By the time I sat outside on the balcony, enjoying the wind and taking the above picture, the temperature had dropped to goose bump producing temps, as in the low 70s. Brrrr.

There is supposed to be fresh incoming, later this afternoon, with falling wet stuff. It's nice having the A/C off for a bit.

And that's your weather report for the day from North Texas. Meanwhile, up in Tacoma, at this point in time, it is cloudy and 56. That is Super Brrrrr!