Stormy!

I took this picture to show the view looking to the North sitting on our screen porch. Here it is in the daylight. Still overcast but you can see everything.

Its past midnight, and I can hear the thunder and see the lightning in the distance. I have not looked at the APRS amateur radio weather map, but have a good idea what it will show. Loyce is in bed and I should be, but this does not look too good. The blue lights are on the docks on the water. The white lights are various sea wall and landscape lighting that we all have.

We are out in the woods about four miles from town. I can hear the wind in the distance and it is beginning to rustle the tops of the trees, on the far river bank.


I have pushed the shutter time an time again trying to capture the lightning, but this little camera is too slow to to capture much of anything. Take five or six and then erase them because I missed the hight of the lightning flash.

I did get this small flash and I save it carefully. I keep on shooting, and erasing. The sky is lighting up continually from the storm. Thunder is becoming closer as it follows the lightning flash with not much delay.


All of a sudden the computer inside on the table begins to alarm. A computer siren, wooah, wooah, wooah. It is the APRS, it has received a NWS warning for our county. I go look, and sure enough it is a tornado warning, and we have a very purple cell just West of our house. Its one AM.

Then its on us and the wind picks up and blows the trees violently. The water is turning over in whitecaps and is rocking the docks madly. They creak and groan from the twisting motion. I go run after the gas grill cover before it blows off the deck.


The wind begins to drive the rain through the screens and is soaking the chair that I am sitting in. I go inside to study the storm images on the computer image. The cell West of us has changed its direction and will track to the North over the town of Eldon. We are saved from the worst of it.

The color intensity for the cell lessens before it gets to Eldon, changing to mostly a washing rain event. Wow! I watch everything for thirty more minutes before I have to go get some sleep. Its two AM!