Thursday, March 1, 2007

In Like a Lion

Here in Lawrence March has definitely come in like a lion. Last night there were storms all to the south and east of us. We spent the evening watching Gary Lesick from Kansas City give us the updates on the weather. There were super-cell thunderstorms that produced tornadoes, there were straight line storms that produced hail, lightening, and rain. In KC - they got up to 6 inches of rain.

They actually pre-empted "Deal or No Deal" and "Medium" last night for storm coverage (for which I am thankful). Apparently people we calling in all mad and Gary kept saying "there are tornadoes people, tornadoes. I think the storm coverage is much more interesting. They now have all sorts of fancy programs that they can look at the storms with so it was pretty cool. Especially as we did not get any bad weather. And thankfully, the tornadoes weren't that bad and, as far as I know, no-one was hurt and not much property was damaged. Though one of the main highways (I-35) in KC, where they just finished doing construction, ended up under about 4 feet of water. The news broadcasters were salivating at the possibility that there might be a design flaw in this $50 million project. Turns out that they are still doing the landscaping and a lot of debris plugged up the drain pipe. Once they got it cleared out, apparently it drained very quickly. They also showed lots of pictures this morning of yards that looked to be covered in snow - but it was hail.

Anyway - the storm that went through must have been really strong. Gary kept making a big deal of how impressive it was (and he is an professional, so he has seen a lot of storms). The thunderstorms were really strong, even when the temperatures had dropped into the fifties. It was interesting to see that while the main line of thunderstorms moved to the north-east, the supercells moved out in their own directions, almost directly east. Apparently that is typical of the super-cells, which are the ones that most often spawn tornadoes.

Today we are on the back-end of the storm - winds up to 35 miles per hour, a bit of blowing snow, falling temperatures.

Hopefully March will go out like a lamb.

So, is it the Lion or the lamb where you live today?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lovely sunny 40 degree day here....I would say Lamb

Anonymous said...

It is a lion, here in Mid-Iowa. Hail, snow, rain, ice. They cancelled classes this afternoon! I'm not teaching today and this still excites me! Glad to hear there was not a tornado near Lawrence yesterday.
Jenny

fillyjonk said...

lamb, except I woke up at 3 am with a migraine because we had a front come through. (Fortunately Excedrin Migraine did away with it).

It's warmish here and sunny today. We're supposed to get cooler over the weekend, but no rain.

And I totally hear you on the weather coverage. I roll my eyes over the people who get upset because their "show" is cancelled because of bad weather. I mean, really: what's more important? A game show or people knowing that they have to run for the storm shelter?

Sparkling Squirrel said...

Weird-- warm wet and unsettled. Definitely not lamb (gray occasionally gusty) but definitely not lion (nothing anywhere near a roar, and much warmer than it has been.) I'd have to go octopus.

Irene said...

Not quite a lion, but certainly cats and dogs. It's raining a lot here, and we have a flood warning in effect. I'm so glad our house isn't too close to a stream!