Posts Tagged → weather
Holy Cow!
This video speaks for itself as being a close up shot of a lightning strike. I did not film this though the person that did film it said it was right here in Oklahoma City. I can believe it because we have some pretty scary lightning around here at times. Ironically I was searching for a specific Oklahoma City Thunder video when I stumbled on this. I am watching the Thunder playing the Hornets so I wanted to find a video on Youtube.
Still Frozen
This morning we got out of the house to survey the storm mess. I took some photos this morning to see some of the ice. As you can see this picture was taken looking directly into the front door of the house. I knew I better take this photo first thing in the morning because I have two teenage sons that would certainly remove these from the house and use them for swords. I am sure you all can remember when you were kids doing the same thing. As pretty as the snow and ice are, I am ready for it to be over. I am ready for some warmer, snow free ground. This makes two major winter storms we have had this winter. We almost always have a couple snow falls each year but nothing of this magnitude. If you click on the photo, it will take you to my Flickr page where you can see the rest of them.
Another Ice Storm
On January 28, 2010 we started off the morning dry and cold. Before long the rain moved in and the temperature dropped. By 10:00 AM the boss had decided to send everyone home because the roads were getting icy. It took us a whole hour to get from our parking lot to the gate to get off base. As the day went on we had more and more rain and later changed to sleet. It appeared that we had dodged the worst of the storm because the sleet does not stick to tree limbs and power lines. From the weather reports it sounds as if the worst of the storm was in Southwestern Oklahoma. Both my sister at Ft. Sill and my sister in-law at Altus AFB lost their power and are still sitting in the dark as of the time I post this. These ice storms are becoming a regular thing. You may remember the ice storm in December 2007 where the Oklahoma City area was hit the hardest. We were without power for a week so I can certainly sympathize with them losing their power.
This morning I woke up to find that we are off work again. This is nice to have a day and a half off work without having to take vacation time. My wife and I have decided that now we are off work so it can stop now. The snow can go away so we can have a nice week end. It is not listening to us. I need to call out Cox Cable to fix my line to the house. My Internet has some serious issues and needs to be redone. I know for a fact the problem is not my network. Well better get this posted before the Internet goes off again.
Culprit
The last couple of days we have had no water because of a busted water line under the house. Yesterday we finally called out a plumber to fix the broken pipe under the house. You can see this pipe in the photo above showing how it burst on one side. Then we found the outdoor faucet was broken under the house on the front. You can see what it currently looks like below where the pipe is pulled partially out of the wall.
I am currently at home waiting for the plumber to return to fix the front faucet. This has been a pretty stressful week with all that has gone on. First my son had an accident when we had a surprise rain during a cold snap. This was just following him losing his job. Then we had this cold snap that brought us temperatures we have not experienced in a long time. The cold has caused us to have no water for the last two days. I really did not want to take off again today but we need to get this fixed. Things are going to improve for all of us soon. Sometimes we must have faith that God will bring us through the problems.
Things have already begun to improve as we reached the upper 50’s yesterday. The cold weather has passed and we are FINALLY seeing the snow melting from the blizzard we had on Christmas Eve. It is supposed to be in the mid 40’s today so hopefully we will be able to melt some more of this snow today. The next week we are going to call to have our ham radio tower taken down so we can sell this house. That will be one burden that I have been a little worried about. We have someone that will take it down and take it with him. The quicker we can get it down, the faster we can sell this house. I guess I have gone on and on about these frozen pipes so I will go ahead and post this and hopefully this chapter will be closed.
Frozen Pipes
. Hopefully we will not have any more freezes of this magnitude.Christmas Eve Snowstorm
Wow! We often complain about never having snow here in Oklahoma City. Most of the time if we do have winter weather, it ends up being sleet or freezing rain. Yesterday it was a nice 65 degrees and we were really enjoying it. This morning I woke up at 6:00 AM and it was raining. By 7:15 it had turned to sleet. The sleet fell for nearly four hours before turning to snow. By noon the National Weather Service had issued a blizzard warning for most of Oklahoma including Oklahoma City. In my 43 years I cannot remember ever having a blizzard warning here. The picture above shows looking behind my house toward the North. The picture below shows a view looking across the street. I was having a difficult time taking this picture because I the snow was blowing in my face even though the wind was from behind the house and I was on the front porch.
To be honest, I was very skeptical of this being much of a winter weather event because we have been promised these storms before and ended up with rain. When these pictures were taken, the wind was blowing 50+ miles per hour (MPH). Although we received 14.1 inches of snow, the drifts were pretty high. We had to shovel a huge drift from behind the car just so we could back out of the drive way to pick up my son from work.
The good thing about this snow is that tomorrow is Christmas and we have not had a white Christmas in 20 years. As of the time I am posting this, it is still snowing pretty hard. The radar shows that it is almost over. It looks like the snow will not last more than a couple more hours. Tomorrow should be a nice clear day for Christmas although we will have a nice snow covered day. While it is nice to have the snow, I have been watching the weather coverage all day and it has been telling us about one car accident in Midwest City that involved 50 cars. Another accident in El Reno involved 20+ cars. I know there have been many others but these two are the ones that really stood out to me. Let’s hope no one was seriously injured. It would be tragic for someone to have injuries on Christmas eve. I did drive to the store just outside my residential area about an hour ago and it was tough but manageable. As long as you don’t stop in a deep snow drift you are okay. We had to help push another car so they could get moving.
For us, it has been a nice day. Our white Christmas is a welcome site and we are happy to see it despite having nearly zero visibility.
I Miss Colors
As much as I love my hometown, there is one thing that it really lacks in the winter time and that is color. As the photo above is in black and white, it is representative of some of the days we have in the winter. This is Ray Trent park in Del City on a cold winter day with no leaves on the trees and a slight fog on a cloudy day.
Fortunately our winters are not too long and our wonderful colors return. What brings this on is an unusual cold snap that we had this past week as did most of the rest of the nation. We had temperatures that hovered around 10 degrees. We went nearly a whole week where the temperature never climbed above freezing. The colorful flowers were taken at the Myriad Gardens in Oklahoma City during the autumn transition.
I love taking pictures whenever I can but lately I have been so busy with work, family, and trying to fix things around the house. We are looking to move in the next year so we are trying to get the house sellable. This means taking my tower down and getting rid of it. Though it is a bit sad to part with my ham radio tower, it will also give me some peace during storm season. Every time we have lightning nearby, I cringe because one strike to my tower could burn the house down. This is ironic because I love severe weather other than that. People often say “just disconnect the cables” but if they only knew how many cables and how they were routed through the wall. Well now they are removed and the tower is next after Christmas.
I can hardly wait until I have some time to go take some more pictures because it is enjoyable and I love to be able to share them on Flickr. By the time Spring comes around we will see a lot of colors with trees and flowers blooming. I love to get out and take pictures then. There is something psychological about the Spring time. It is almost as if there is life for everyone to experience. The birds singing, the flowers blooming, and it even smells fresh. I love it and sure miss it when we have weeks like this. I should be grateful because we use to live at Eielson AFB near Fairbanks, Alaska. When we lived there, I could barely stand it when March would arrive and it would still be –15 degrees. We are very fortunate to be able to experience all four seasons here. It does seem that Winter is going to be colder this year since it is still not winter and we have already been as low as 10 degrees. At least the cold will kill many of the insects and maybe next summer will not be as bad with fleas and ticks. It has been a long time since we have had a real cold winter so I guess we are due for one. Another good thing about having a cold winter is that spring is that much more pleasant after one. I hope you all have a nice CHRISTtmas. Thanks for stopping by.
Summer in Oklahoma City
I guess it is that time again. The photo above shows the temperature as 109 degrees while the National Weather Service only listed the high as 105. Oklahoma gets a little of both cold and hot. This is fairly common temperatures to get in summer though it only happens about two weeks each year. The average high on the hottest day of the year is 94 degrees though we have periods of much warmer like this. Just thought I would share this.
Boy Was I Wrong?
It is not that often that a person can get it so wrong that it brings fear to them. Just 30 minutes ago I was complaining about the rain always missing us. This evening was shaping up to be another one of those evenings where there is a line of thunderstorms that goes completely across the state and then forms a hole just as it passes the metro area. As much as I love storms I find myself getting mad when this happens. Well I guess I insulted God, or angered him in some way because shortly after that, we had a downpour. I would estimate that the wind was blowing nearly 80 MPH in the above photo. You can even see a leaf blowing by in this shot.
In this picture you can see how the street was flooded near my home. This is the rain that we never get. I would say the water was about four inches deep in the center of the road here.
In the picture above you can see the tree branch laying in the road with the hail splashing in the flooded street. The storm was almost over at this point and you can see the elementary school in the background is showing signs of the sun coming out.
This is the beautiful sky as the storm is moving away. The large bird circles over head asking himself “What was that?” I really enjoyed this storm and wanted to share it with the rest of you. That wind did get a little scary at one point. I missed some great shots because I was trying to keep the camera dry. At one point the wind was blowing so hard and the rain was coming down so hard that I could barely see across the street. I do not want to be known as the one that always complains when things are going bad and never give God credit when things are going well. We really needed this rain and it was a real blessing. I am very thankful to be able to get rain especially when two hours earlier it was 97 degrees. If you want to see the rest of the pictures, just click on any one of them and it will take you to Flickr to see the whole set. Thanks for stopping by.
How Does This Happen?
I long ago noticed a trend that happens more often than you may think. I have noticed that many times we will have a line of storms that go from Kansas to Texas, or Texas to Arkansas and the storm will somehow miss us. How does this happen? The storm will be a non stop line all the way across the state and yet just before it arrives in the Oklahoma City area and a hole will appear so that it completely misses us. Once it passes, it will rejoin and it once again goes all the way across the state. Someone like myself that loves stormy weather notices these types of things.
I think I will start saving screen shots of radar views any time I catch this happening. I know it sounds like a non issue but it is amazing how often this happens.