Morning excitement
A tornado makes a great excuse for being late to work, especially when the tornado does no damage. I spent the half-hour before going to work unplugging things in the house and herding the cats into the hallway. This is the only part of the apartment that has no windows – a great feature when you're airing out the house, but not so great when you're facing the prospect of flying glass. There's no door at one end of the hallway, which makes it only semi-useful for shelter purposes, but it does in a pinch.
When you wake up to thunderstorms in Florida, you tune in the news. The Weather Channel is erudite and informative, but their national focus and rotating "local weather" slide shows often make them second best when it comes to pertinent information. Bay News 9 can be counted on to cover the local scene and get the necessary facts, but they often come across like a class of eighth-graders running a news station. This morning we had a tornado warning, and so a field reporter rambled on via phone about how nasty it was outside, repeating himself and speaking long after his ability to impart useful info was spent. Then we went to the viewer phone calls, where beach residents looking for their fifteen seconds of fame gave their sensational accounts of the waterspout that passed them by ("no, I didn't see it do any damage") and the heavy rain that frightened their dogs back into the camper. How very appropriate that Bay News 9's studio is in Pinellas Park. I'm sure the trailer park tenants there love their programming.
After about thirty minutes of this the rain let up and the Pinpoint Doppler 9000 indicated that the worst was past, although there were more thunderclouds headed up from the south. I left everything unplugged, wished the cats the best of luck, and headed into work.
A tornado makes a great excuse for being late to work, especially when the tornado does no damage. I spent the half-hour before going to work unplugging things in the house and herding the cats into the hallway. This is the only part of the apartment that has no windows – a great feature when you're airing out the house, but not so great when you're facing the prospect of flying glass. There's no door at one end of the hallway, which makes it only semi-useful for shelter purposes, but it does in a pinch.
When you wake up to thunderstorms in Florida, you tune in the news. The Weather Channel is erudite and informative, but their national focus and rotating "local weather" slide shows often make them second best when it comes to pertinent information. Bay News 9 can be counted on to cover the local scene and get the necessary facts, but they often come across like a class of eighth-graders running a news station. This morning we had a tornado warning, and so a field reporter rambled on via phone about how nasty it was outside, repeating himself and speaking long after his ability to impart useful info was spent. Then we went to the viewer phone calls, where beach residents looking for their fifteen seconds of fame gave their sensational accounts of the waterspout that passed them by ("no, I didn't see it do any damage") and the heavy rain that frightened their dogs back into the camper. How very appropriate that Bay News 9's studio is in Pinellas Park. I'm sure the trailer park tenants there love their programming.
After about thirty minutes of this the rain let up and the Pinpoint Doppler 9000 indicated that the worst was past, although there were more thunderclouds headed up from the south. I left everything unplugged, wished the cats the best of luck, and headed into work.
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