Interesting or strange weather pics (Warning lots of images!)

[Danceingfae]

Yesterday was some big strange weather here. It wasn't really the weather actually but more the sky and how it looked for about ten minutes or so.

Check out the pics!

I hid them behind the spoiler for anyone who doesn't have really high speed.

All I can say for this is whoa.. who'd have thought?

[moronqueen]

As I said on your journal...that is indeed pretty crazy. 

I have...a few links to my DeviantArt account...not up for uploading 'em to photobucket -

http://moronqueen.deviantart.com/art/City-morning-85595954 - Morning sky

http://moronqueen.deviantart.com/art/Moonlight-Over-Minneapolis-50450212 - Back from when I had to travel through Minneapolis at night for work

http://moronqueen.deviantart.com/art/After-the-Storm-31787079 - After one rip-roarer of a storm while we lived in the apartment. Third story with high wind-gusts, lashing winds and hail. Neeever doing that again, if I can help it. 

[Kazari]

Talk about red sky. Where do you live at again?

[Danceingfae]

Vancouver, Washington. And we're not all that close to the coast. I've heard that near the sea that means a storm is coming.. inland.. I think it was suppose to be tornados *Shrinks down and looks around warily*

[Aignatius]

Eeyah. Beautiful pics, Fae.
There's something about storms that both intrigue and terrify me beyond words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LvdlpnnfN4

This was filmed in Kansas on May 23rd. Let's hope none of ever have to get this close to a wedge like that. HE was chasing what he thought was the main tornado, turned out it was a satellite to a huge one that nearly got him. I think the guy who filmed this is certifiably nuts. He's lucky he didn't flip over. And there are a few choice words spoken here, but I cannot blame him a bit for saying them. And toward the end, you see a power pole get snapped off and the lines nearly landed on his truck. Crazy stuff.

[Danceingfae]

Thanks Aig!

And OMG! Wow! That is some awesome phototage but dang! That is dangerous getting so close to something like that. My mouth dropped open while watching that. I'm betting when the camera went off that's when he hightailed it out of there.

Phew!

[Aignatius]

Yeah, I was gaping nearly the whole time, too. This one is going to be a classic.

[CriticalCrittles]

HOLY CRAP THAT VIDEO!    That kinda stuff amazes me so much and yet freaks me out so much at the same time! It's awesome! It's like that movie Twister, when it first came out I watched it over and over and over again, cuz it was just so awesome and amazing yet it freaked the heck outta me at the same time, that something so huge like that exists and actually goes through towns tearing things apart and throwing them where it pleases, distroying everything and sometimes even taking lives, with no one to control it....and it can just randomly appear, we have no control of it, it will go where it pleases.

So it was like, I love and yet hate that kinda thing....it's strange....wow.....yeah I know, I'm strange heh.  (Now I have to go find and watch Twister lol )

[Ninjara]

   You know, Aig....whew, you just solved a mystery for me by posting that.

    I had never heard the term 'wedge tornado' until now.  And after seeing that video and going online and viewing lots of pictures, I can now say that yes, I have driven through a tornado. And that guy's video is nothing compared to what I experienced with a few other motorists.

    Somewhere just outside of Santa Rosa, New Mexico (can't recall the year but it was the one I met Nardo) I noticed a black, low hanging wall of cloud off to my left, with these strange finger-like things hanging from it.  It really creeped me out.  I had never seen anything like it.
It looked far enough away at first.....but then it became obvious it was headed for the highway.....and that's when the semi trucks started to pick up speed.  Everyone was doing at least 90mph before it hit.

     When it did hit, we had to slow down to a crawl.  It as 3 in the afternoon and everything went dark as night.  I remember wind, and having to hang tight to keep the car steady, and the rain came down so hard I couldn't see the hood of the car anymore.  The rain was hitting the pavement so hard that it looked like we were driving in fog.  You couldn't even see where the road ended on the sides to pull over.

     And the lightning.  I had never seen red lightning before either.  I now completely understand the Biblical term 'pillars of fire'.  There is  such a thing.  There is no other way to describe the lightning that was banging all around us just 50 ft away.  I thought for sure one of us would be hit.  But as far as I know we were all spared.

     It lasted about 15 minutes.....I think.  But it felt like an eternity.

     When we reached Tucumcari I was one of the ones who stopped and called it a day.  Just as well.  Abilene,TX.....where I was going to stop for the night, was under a tornado watch I found out while watching tv in my motel room.  So I was glad I stopped where I did so I could get some sleep.

     Anyway, now I know tornadoes do not always look like a big funnel dropping out of a cloud in the middle of nothing.  They can be a horrid looking black thing with fingers that can drop from the sky and engulf you.

     Nice beginning to my first solo cross country trip. Not. 

     

     

[CriticalCrittles]

oh my god wow...that was horrible! but like....wow....it sounded amazing...i mean, not in the good way of course but still....wow.....

i am really sorry you had to go through that though, it sounded terrifying....

[Ninjara]

 

    Going through it once in a life is enough. Could have skipped the experience altogether. 

     All I could think of was my kids at home that would be leaving the next day with my parents to drive a more southerly route to visit relatives in Texas. We were going to rendezvous at my mother-in-law's house in Ohio after two weeks.
     The reason I was going part of it alone was because I wanted one-on-one time with my Turtle buddies, and then one-on-one time with the kids on the way back.  I'd taken a month off from work so we could do this trip.
     
      During that 15 minute hell-ride, if I wasn't reciting psalm 23, I was cussing myself out, because it was looking pretty much like my kids were going to grow up without a mother at the time.

       Anyways, next time I see something like that on the horizon, I'm either staying put to see what it's going to do, or I'm doing an about face and head in the opposite direction. 

[TurtleNinja]

Wow. Just...wow, Aig.

That sucker had to be at least 1/4 - 1/2 mile wide. Huge! No wonder it had satellite twisters.

Guy's nuts and luckier than he deserves. Close as he was, he's lucky he didn't get picked up anyway by a twister that big. Cool video, but yeesh...

[Aignatius]

Crittle, Twister is one of those movies I have watched many times and never get tired of it. One of my all time faves. I'm a weather geek anyway, and storms are fascinating. They are also very scary, as a kid living in Louisiana, the storms were intense and very frightening, and in the Northeast, they can be just as bad. Here in CA, at least the area I am in, we rarely get any kind of storms. Occasionally we get a doozy sometimes even with an actual tornado, usually an EF-1 at the most, but that is very rare.
Something about watching tornadoes, I am mesmerized by them. I have to see exactly how they work. And I have to say, they did a good job with the special effects in Twister, because debris, (houses, cows, cars, tractors) really do kind of hover just outside the "suck zone" or look as though they are feathers drifting around the vortex.  Strange events.

Crumbs, Ninjara. That's freaky. I didn't know you'd been through that on your way east, or I'd forgotten in the sea of other kewl stories you tell.

[CriticalCrittles]

Hey Aig, I just watched Twister! It's also one of my all time favs I never ever get tired of  Love it!

[Aignatius]

Aww, my tape is worn out! 
I need to find the DVD somewhere, it will likely be in the sale section, since it's now considered an old movie...

Traveling and getting into the middle of a bunch of supercells would be quite scary. You're out on the interstate, and it's flat, and there's nothing... where do you go?
Not under an overpass apparently, saw a video clip of a family hiding from a tornado that passed right over them, Then the sheriff who was following the storm, came by and scolded them for going under the overpass, said it's the worst place to be, since the winds get concentrated under there. Better to be in a culvert. Uhm, yeah, if you can find one... and getting out of the car when there's debris flying around... eeyah. Maybe drive the car into the ditch as a last resort? 

[Ninjara]

   Geez, for sure, where does one go?  You're driving and and you want to get to where you're going.....you really don't want to back track.  And with a divided highway that option isn't always available to you the minute you want it.

    My misadventure took place in the latter half of July, 1996.
 (Someone has jogged my memory for me.) 
  So don't worry about the memory bank, Aig.  The events of my life seem like a big blur and I can't remember the time slots they go in most of the time.

   Too much stuff, over so long a time.....man, if I live as long as I've been told...... I should start forgetting now and get it over with.

[Aignatius]

Well, Ninjara, it happens to computers. The hard drive gets full, and slows everything down a bit. Yet, you don't really want to delete any files, because you might delete important ones... and yet somebody comes along and does a memory dump,and then... you lose...

... what was I talking about?

Oh, yes. Memory.

Of what, I uhm... can't remember. 

[Danceingfae]

Hmm, think you need to upgrade your mental memory Aig Not sure who's selling that though so just keep an eye out.

That strange weather over here has not reoccurred. Just one day of sun then it's been cold and miserable. *Sigh* I usually like it overcast but some sun is nice too.

[Mindy]

@Aig: Whoa, nelly!! That's more than just up close and personal and way too much for my liking. Indeed, he is lucky to be breathing at this very moment.

@Fae: beautiful pictures! I love seeing the sky before a storm.

Hey, Kazari! You need to post up the video that your brother filmed of the tornado 10 miles from your front porch 

A tornado hit our area in early May and here are some of the pictures: http://www.slide.com/r/9Gs6r8Ux4T8OA7o4dkxMrUdZ_tMl0w-I?previous_view=lt_embedded_url

This is the first tornado to do some damage since 1936, and the tornado was down the street from my job that morning. Eep!

[HUN]

Brings back terrifying memories of my college days in Springfield, MO.
crouched in a basement waiting for the noise to stop, but it never does!
At least, it feels like that! 

We were fortunate that our house didn't leave the ground, nor suffered much damage, but the local mall was totaled!
No more video game arcade! That was a bad year! 

[Aignatius]

Those were some impressive storm pics, Mindy. Sure is an active season this year...

[moronqueen]

Aahh...childhood memories of KY. Quite a few rip-roarers there...same with upstate NY. And...y'know...here.

There was a tornado north of here by a little bit...about a 20-30 minute drive. Here's the slideshow one of the news stations put up. A little boy was found dead outside his house in the pond nearby, his older sister just got out of the hospital not long ago, and there were something like six other injuries. Tornados are crazy scary...scarier than most storms, I think, because they're so unpredictable.

Also...a video I took of the hail storm last week. It took place in full sunlight.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mGkzGv6-Y0M

MN is WEIRD. It'll snow while the sun's shining, too.

[HUN]

Definitely NOT a good day to be caught outside!
I thought I heard the yowl of a terrified cat near the end of that.
It did look terrifying, but the sunlight was pretty!

Just like love sometimes; pretty, yet painful! 

[moronqueen]

LOL She was only terrified because I was paying attention to the weather outside and not her. It was pretty, though...yes a lot like amore..

[HUN]

Careful, Queenie! Hell hath no fury like a spurned kitty! 

[Mindy]

@Aig: Yep, this year's wild activity reminds of 1994. Our area had a massive ice storm in Feb. 94 and then the following 94 summer was the hottest that I can remember; tornadoes came out of everywhere that year, too. 2006 was also a hot summer.

@moronqueen: Tornadoes can also hit during sunlight, too. 

[Aignatius]

Video clip of a lightning strike about 3 or 4 miles northwest of us. Mostly dry storms, so I'm hoping the lightning didn't hit anything too combustible. Which, just about everything is, in this weather, but still, one can hope. It's about 20 or so seconds into the clip, and then the thunder comes toward the end. And my arms were tired, because I'd taken so many shots, to catch some lightning....

Trying to get this to embed is like trying to catch ground squirrels with a ping pong paddle... like you get that nagging feeling that you're wasting your time.

So, I'll just put up a direct link.

http://s44.photobucket.com/albums/f8/Aignatius/?action=view&current=MVI_3190.flv

Edit: Never mind, it embedded anyway. Sheesh...

[Mindy]

Lightning storms are so beautiful! You oughta see the strikes here o__o;

Thanks for showing us the video, Aig.

[Aignatius]

Yeah, they would definitely be more numerous back east.
Thing is, here, they are so rare, it's a big deal when one comes through.
Especially if they are dry ones, because, well, you know what happens.
The inevitable fires.
There's been something like 500 small fires started since Saturday, and at least a dozen big ones, from the lightning strikes.

If you look here, you'll see ze significance!
http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/

Fortunately it's a large state, and most of it wilderlands, but some unfortunates have had to vacate their homes. Some had no homes to return to, but not to the degree of problems that So. CA had.

Just south of here, about 20 miles, is one of the biggest the state has seen in a very long time, the Indian fire inland in Big Sur. It has been spreading and has grown into this huge mass of smoke that is easily seen form satellite. And a new one, which has closed the highway along coastal Big Sur, and another that closed the highway north of here for a while, from yet another fire. 

I dare say, living among sand dunes has a number of positives here, for us badgers.