Watching for Storms 03/31/23
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Today was to (potentially) be a bad day for storms, according to the
NWS. It still might be, according to the tornado watch that continues
until 8pm. But, it appears that the weather might miss us here in
Fulton.
Presently, we're under a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, a Tornado Watch,
and a Wind Advisory. In other words, storms are blowing through fast,
and plenty could go wrong.
The point of the advisories and watches aren't to scare you, they're
to help you to be prepared. The Warning and Emergency levels are more
serious, but even the Warning isn't too terrible. The Emergency level
is rare, and it means you're in mortal danger.
We've only had the Emergency level once while we've lived here, when a
destructive tornado was blowing through Jefferson City a few years
back. It was headed our direction, but it didn't track very long, and
we weren't in danger. We went and camped out in our basement several
times that day and night anyway, leading up to the Emergency.
But today, we're just watching for storms. The chimes on the back
porch are sounding, but they're not chaotic. Maybe they'll get
chaotic, but 4pm-5pm local time was supposed to be the worst of it,
and we're already there. We're still ready to head for the basement,
if needed.
My daughter has four birds, and they live in a very large enclosure
upstairs. I asked here earlier this afternoon what her plan was for
the birds, if we needed to go to the basement. She said that perhaps
we might carry them down, to which I responded that the enclosure was
very large.
She spend the afternoon preparing the "travel cage" as we call it--a
smaller enclosure for transport--to be the birdy tornado cage, which
could more easily go downstairs. It's all cleaned out and prettied up
and bedecked with all sorts of perches and bowls and toys... but the
silly birds, programmed as they are, don't really want to go inside.
Here we are at storm time, and they're flying around the house (she
got them out of their main enclosure, and placed the new one in front
of the door to the main one... not working so far.)
Who knows, maybe she's getting--wait, status update: she just knocked
on my door and informed me that they're all in the travel cage.
Success. Her plan, she said, is to give them millet while they're in
there, and practice every once in a while so they're (hopefully) no so
terrified each time.
In any case, today was a little bit of an interesting day. With
storms, I took my main radios offline, and have been operating a cheap
uSDX QRP for the whole day, off a battery (just to keep the battery in
use). I figure, if lightning strikes, I'd rather lose the uSDX than
another radio. Worked fairly well on 40m this morning, but traffic is
light this afternoon, probably due to the storm. Most operators go
offline, for obvious reasons.
A slow and quiet day, in a lot of ways. I also took some time to clean
a few guns. They need to be maintained, you know. They're all locked
up again now. I'm not sure about how this evening will go, but my
guess is that the main storm threat will fade here in an hour or two,
and we'll watch a movie. I'd rather be out and about, but with bad
weather it's just not a good idea.
Did I mention on here that I did some online and in-person weather
spotter / Skywarn training recently? Anyone can do it, and it's pretty
interesting. The NWS puts on the training. In most areas, they only do
the in-person once a year. Well, I should say, in most areas around
here that I am aware of. The online training is arguably more
detailed, and can be taken any time. I liked both. The only real use
is to be more prepared myself, if I see something in the sky that I
need to quickly make sense of, and to make more sense if I ever want
to call the NWS with a report.
That is all for now, thanks for listening gopherspace. Be well.
