Sunday, June 08, 2008

I want to be a storm chaser







































This was on our way home from dinner tonight. I took around two hundred photos and I can't find one I would delete and I wish I would have taken more but I had to take it in with my real eyes too.


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23 Comments:

Blogger kim said...

melek -- before I even got a chance to take yard work photos, everything is getting washed out! This storm was coming in after a massive one the day before. We are getting even more tomorrow!

We are lucky though, we are high ground, just going to have to wash the stones back to their proper planting beds (and re-grade the driveway! thank goodness we own heavy equipment -- river/rut city down our gravel drive)

9:38 AM  
Blogger Matt said...

Good to see you were in the passengers' seat. :)I get in trouble when my wife finds pictures on the memory card that were taken through the windshield of my car...

2:16 PM  
Blogger kay said...

an those are amazing!! and crazy scary. i hope you got in the bathtub with that one coming!

3:55 PM  
Blogger kim said...

Kay, many members of my family are aviators -- that means I grew up looking at the sky and considering what I would and would not be willing to fly into, so weather doesn't scare me much when I can see it and what it's doing.

Now ask me about Saturday's storm when we locked into "the children's place" at the mall. Everyone was hustled into the back chambers or other safe areas and we were locked down for over an hour. The girls tried on every cute outfit in the store while rich and I go go danced in the dressing room -- much to winnie's dismay. And while we were cucumbers on the outside -- rich had the radar displayed on his cell phone and we the x that marked our spot was in the purple part of the storm. There was no purple on the key of severity -- it only went up to red -- we were inside the purple which was inside the red! I was glad I couldn't see what was going on out there.

5:18 PM  
Blogger kim said...

Matt - I'm telling!

6:03 PM  
Blogger blog author said...

isn't that also called a "Blue Northern" bc of the color and how it blows in? it always freaks me out when i can see the edge of the storm.

6:27 PM  
Blogger kim said...

my mother-in-law was in the car behind us and not thrilled about the storm at all. I think my father-in-law was loving it. I'd rather be looking at it than being under it.

I love that shiz.

6:37 PM  
Blogger MaNiC MoMMy™ said...

Didn't you feel the sky was gonna open up and some huge monster hands would come out and rip you from the road???

But where is all the rain? We had a TON of rain. I have pics too I will be posting later from our excursion to Wisconsin!

Those are beautiful pics though, although some are scary!

6:56 PM  
Blogger kim said...

no hands, but I could see how conspiracy theorists think clouds such as this harbor UFOs!

7:31 PM  
Blogger Kate said...

Those pictures are amazing! I would have been absolutely terrified! Any time I've lived anywhere that tornadoes were a threat... if there was a warning I would be in the basement. Forget waiting for the sirens. I'm so impressed that you were able to stay calm enough to take pictures.

(Came here from Manic's blog)

8:05 PM  
Blogger TTQ said...

we need the rain here, and the sky fits my mood..awesome pics.. I'm usually the idiot running around town taking pics of hurricanes. I don't plan to ever give that up

9:21 PM  
Blogger kim said...

one of the pilots e-mailed me to say, don't fly into that one.

How about drive into it?

You know tornados are usually at the end of storms -- this thing had no end!

Of course not always from the end -- one time our house was right under some converged multiple super cell thing that had the TV weather folk panting and wildly circling areas of tornado action within the storm.

I'll never forget that one -- people calling to make sure I was hitting the deck, and me looking at the circled funnel cloudS/possible tornadoes on TV screen radar and listening for that train sound -- with nowhere to run! We don't have a basement. Our living room is kind of a walk-out basement, so there were some cement walls to cling to, but I wasn't feeling confident of them staving off a tornado.

Nobody in our town got a direct hit -- but I had mail from a far off town in my yard.

Oh, and Rich was on the road on his way home.

The funnels were not near my home, they were OVER my home -- lots of wind and strong debris -- thank god they did not connect to the ground.

10:04 AM  
Blogger kim said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

10:04 AM  
Blogger kim said...

Oh, and manic -- the rain was UNDER that thing, I'd rather be where I was looking at it than where you were getting wet! It eventually got us and rained ALL NIGHT.

Kate -- thanks for stopping by.

10:22 AM  
Blogger Liane Spicer said...

Oh no. That funnel looks too damned close for comfort. And that's probably the scariest sky I've ever seen.

12:15 AM  
Blogger Liane Spicer said...

...great shots, btw. Like a true journalist, you risked your life for your story. [Well, it sure looks that way to me.]

12:21 AM  
Blogger KATE said...

Kim! I LOVE those photos! LOVE them!! I want to be a storm chaser too, I think I should come out there and we can be dorks together! Crazy good pics girl!!!

2:20 AM  
Blogger kim said...

Wordtryst-- When I look at the one photo of the car heading straight toward the storm, I can't help but think of a Steve Martin/John Candy movie scene where everyone is yelling, "you're going the wrong way!".

We had the radar images up on Rich's phone -- this stormfront was more ominous looking at this point -- it was bringing in the shit, but was not the actual shit at the front or on the sides there. We made it home before anything hit the fan!

I had never seen a storm come in like that and probably won't again, unless I move to the plains or something (what do I know, I'm just making that plains part up -- I've just never seen a storm look like that around here and I'm a looker).

I'm just waiting for some weather expert to show up and say, "Look at that killer part of the storm right there, you dumbass, what were you thinking?!!"

I was thinking, "Oh my word, that is the coolest weather I have ever seen with my own eyes."

Kate -- Let's go! I'll meet you in Kansas.
TTQ, you comin'?

9:42 AM  
Blogger Liane Spicer said...

I was thinking, "Oh my word, that is the coolest weather I have ever seen with my own eyes."

LOL! I'm sure those must have been famous last words somewhere, sometime...

You're a brave one. My fear and awe would have struggled, but I think the fear would have won out.

12:34 PM  
Blogger kim said...

LOL! It would figure too -- I have so many imagined worries, it would be just like me to not worry when there is cause.

1:59 PM  
Blogger Barrie said...

Those are amazing....and scary... shots!

I could only be a storm chaser if I had a camera with a 2-mile long zoom. Ha!

5:47 PM  
Blogger TTQ said...

You can bet your sweet ass I'm coming with you and Kate. I'm bringing a zillion SD cards. Pink rubber rainboots and shorts. Can you braid hair or can Winnie? I don't want to miss something cause my hair is in my eyes.

4:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

These shots are nothing less than amazing!!!!!!

9:18 PM  

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