What a day! ! ! I do not ever remember a day in which we found ourselves under a severe thunderstorm warning three separate times in the same day – and come to think of it, one of those warnings was actually a tornado warning. One of the weirdest things about the day was that we went under the tornado warning when the sky was still mostly sunny; I was in a McDonald’s drive-thru when the sirens went off, and I actually took a picture of the blue sky above me to commemorate just how bizarre that moment was. Then the phone rang and Kathy told me to hurry home because there were really nasty storms right off our port bow – and indeed, by the time I got home it looked like that scene in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” where the clouds boil right before the alien ship comes down. That storm ended up slipping just to the north of us – but then another storm bore down on Racine – and then another one after that – – – for a total of three different warnings in a single afternoon. And we got slammed by a couple of different downpours and some strong winds, although none of the storms were anywhere close to being severe. So that would be three false alarms in a single afternoon.
On second thought, I am perhaps being a little bit harsh here. Just because we didn’t have severe weather doesn’t mean that other people in town didn’t. (Am I saying that right? Triple-negatives get me very confused!) Somebody somewhere in Racine probably had worse weather than we did on Hillside Drive, but the fact remains that the TV told us three times to take shelter immediately – this is a dangerous situation – blah blah blah – and three times we were fine. It just seems like whoever is doing the warnings these days are perhaps a little bit trigger-happy. . . or at least putting wider areas under warnings than are truly warranted. I am especially irritated at how quickly tornado warnings tend to be issued even when an actual tornado has not been sighted and verified but simply because there is a dangerous storm afoot from which tornados could easily form. Isn’t that what Watches are for? By issuing premature warnings, aren’t meteorologists running the risk of crying wolf and desensitizing us to the word Warning altogether? Actually, I think what got me cranky right off the bat was the inane out-in-the-field reporting on Channel Four, which had reporters scattered all over southeastern Wisconsin calling in reports that went something like this: “Well, Scott, out here by the county K exit on I-94 we have very dark clouds overhead. The clouds are quite dark and threatening, and we have heavy rainfall just beginning. It’s a very strong rainfall and there is also lots of thunder, and the clouds are quite threatening. And the combination of rains and strong winds are cutting down visibility and the rain is making the highways a bit slippery. . . etc. etc.” My favorite moment was when one of the reporters at one point said “I’m not sure if you can hear that lightning in the background.” Uh, no we can’t – but we maybe hear the thunder. I think these really pointless reports from the field helped make it seem like a bunch of barely competent worry-warts were running the show today. But at least Kathy and I were comfortably settled at home. I pity the air travelers at Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee who were already at their gates waiting for their flights. Because of the storm warnings, airport officials decided to clear everyone out of all of the gates and herd them into the main terminal . . . which meant that every one of those people ended up going through security all over again when the all clear was finally given. I think I would have gone completely postal if I had been caught in that mess.
I think it’s time for me to stop complaining because it almost sounds like I wanted severe weather – which is far from the case. It was good that we escaped the worst of it, which was nice for our flowers and our patio furniture (we’ve lost two glass-top patio tables to bad weather since living here) to say nothing of our fairly new roof, which we had to replace because of storm damage. (Whenever I hear the words “large hail” from a weatherman’s lips, my heart jumps into my throat for a moment or two.) And it was just enough storm to be rather exciting, to tell the truth. (Like yesterday – when a real whopper of a storm tore through Kenosha right in the middle of my Morning Show, at one point knocking out electricity to our whole building and throwing us off the air for almost half an hour. And who was there all by himself, trying to get us back on the air? That’s right, Mr. Panic himself. Eventually, we were able to connect with our engineer, who pressed a couple of buttons on his home computer and had us up and running again. But that was a good little moment of humble pie for us at the station because it reminded us that even though we have a brand spankin’ new radio tower and transmitter, Mother Nature still packs quite a wallop when she gets wants to remind us of her formidability. And maybe that’s why erring on the side of caution makes some sense.
Okay, Never Mind. Go back to whatever you were doing.
pictured: Channel Four’s radar showing one of the potent storms that threatened Racine this afternoon.