Statement as of 8:03 PM EST on December 02, 2009

Tornado Watch 792 remains in effect until 400 am EST for the
following locations

FL
. Florida counties included are

Brevard Citrus Clay
DeSoto Flagler Hardee
Hernando Hillsborough Lake
Manatee Marion Orange
Osceola Pasco Pinellas
Polk Putnam St. Johns
Sarasota Seminole Sumter
Volusia

I’m in Polk County… They’ve been talking about the potential for severe weather occurring today and tonight all week, both on the news and from the National Weather Service. I think the first special weather statement I saw regarding this was perhaps Saturday or Sunday. I sure hope they’re not making a big deal about this, though Inshallah everyone is OK. I do like a good storm, though, just no property damage, injury, or death.

I’ll keep everyone posted.

Forecast as of 7:56 PM EST on December 2, 2009

Now
Tornado Watch in effect for parts of central Florida until 4 am… Through 9 PM…scattered showers and a few thunderstorms are moving east through parts of western Florida from south of Fort Meade…to north of Cedar Key….with the strongest storms located north of Interstate 4. Parts of Interstate 75 is included in this area. These showers and are expected to spread southeast throughout the night. Expect gusty winds…heavy rainfall…and occasional lightning associated with these showers.

Benton, Ark.’s Spook City event for children, already rescheduled for Thursday night in downtown Benton, has been canceled or postponed because of the weather.

The city is under tornado watches and warnings tonight, according to Jill Jones, executive director of the Benton Advertising & Promotion Commission.

Jones said in an e-mail that it likely will be rescheduled because “that’s a lot of candy that still needs to be eaten.”

Tornado watch…it’s become like the boy that cried wolf. This is the 2nd or 3rd (I know it is only Wednesday) time this week we have had one. We have gotten two rumbles of thunder and that is the extent of any storm.

The rain and impending storms stuck me in on the treadmill again. I had a lot to get done at home though so it’s okay. I developed a plan this morning at work. Everything went well and I finished about 35 minutes sooner. That is mostly because I only had 2 loads of laundry. Big loads yes.

I came home sorted laundry, started the first load and mixed up chocolate chip cookies then chilled the dough while I ran 10 minutes on the treadmill. After running I went down and put laundry in the dryer and started load two and then made two trays of cookies and headed back upstairs to the treadmill for 10 more minutes. After 10 minutes I came down and waited the last couple of minutes and pulled the cookies out cooled the trays and stuck in the second round. I grabbed the dry laundry and put the wet in the dryer then raced up to grab the cookies out. Then I headed up to the treadmill for the final 10 minutes. My legs were so tired at this point but I made it just fine. Then I got the last of the laundry and finally showered.

I loved being busy. I loved having just out of the oven cookies for Paul when he got home. I feel like I did more in that two hours than I did all day. That is a big thing because today was Wednesday the day of the week that I work non stop from 7 until 3 or 3:30. Work is the same thing it is very robotic and can be done with little thinking at this point because we have such a set way we have to set up the paper.

The 30 minutes of running was fun. Ten minutes is so much easier to get through than just running on a treadmill for 30 minutes straight. I mixed each segment up and kept my muscles guessing. As I said my legs were really tired by time I got to the last 3 minutes of the last segment. I was on my feet the whole time I wasn’t running. I was going up and down the stairs carrying the laundry up and down the stairs and down to the laundry room below the house. One thing that wasn’t a good idea was eating a scoop of cookie dough before running the first segment. I thought I was going to throw up for the first couple minutes. Ooops!

Hmm…it is sounding like this storm may be a little bit more than the ones from the other days. I think there has been 5 rummbles of thunder!

Feeling in a grayscale kind of mood today.
Maybe its the weather. Its pretty nasty out
today. We’re under tornado warnings. You can see some other gray pix here.

Severe Threat is continuing for South Central Texas.We are monitoring the severe weather threat for our area. A tornado watch is in effect for South Central Texas including San Antonio until 9pm tonight. A Severe Thunderstorm Watch is in effect for Central Texas until 6pm. A Tornado Watch means that conditions are favorable for tornado development.

As of 4:05pm, tornado warnings were issued for parts of Central Texas. Keep it tuned to KSAT-12, KSAT.com,  JustWeather.com, Twitter, and if you have storm pictures send them to pics@ksat.com

Tornadoes can have winds of more than 300 mph

The statistics tell a troubling story:  Tornado deaths are on the rise.  Since 1994, the number of people killed during tornadoes has nearly quadrupled from around 36 in 2004 to 126 in 2008.   While 2008 was a banner year for tornadoes, 2004-2007 did not see a signicant rise in the number of twisters, only deaths.  What’s the cause of this?

With better warnings than ever before (nearly every tornado that touches down in the U.S. has a warning before it moves through a community) and more ways to get the word out via television, radio, weather radio, internet, text messages, etc., the clues point to three potential answers:

1. People no longer take warnings seriously.

2. People don’t know what to do when tornadoes are imminent.

3.  People don’t have a safe place to seek shelter inside their homes.

The purpose of StormSafe is to help people:

1.  Understand the importance of Warnings.

2.  Find ways of getting needed weather information 24 hours a day.

3.  Figure out the safest place to be in their homes during storms and tornadoes.

In future posts, I’ll be tackling these issues one by one.

While it is only the 10th of February, we had our first tornado watch of 2009!  This does not bode well for the Spring season here in tornado alley.    And with the “change”ing of the seasons, please remember . . . (courtesy of www.despair.com)

“When the winds of change blow hard enough, the most trivial of things can turn into deadly projectiles.”

Was planning to sleep until 7:00 this morning but instead was awakened by the weather radio this morning at 5:44 to hear that we are under yet another tornado watch.

Winter here is usually pretty beautiful but this year has been a roller coaster ride thus far.  Thought I would share a picture I took of a Tampa morning under a tornado watch.

Kind of cool with the WordPress snow huh?

Calm During The Storm, originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl.

Storm clouds over Tampa, Florida.

Taken on February 3, 2006 with the Canon PowerShot SD500.

Starting around 4 a.m., the weather radio has issued one blasting tornado watch after another as Gustav comes ashore. I scurried to get organized for a tornado and none to soon as they switched to tornado warnings. They began to call the names of roads in the path of the tornado and I recognized the near by rural road I take as a short-cut to the post office. If it is close enough to recognize street names, I pay attention.

Back in 2004, my hometown of Jackson, Tennessee experienced an f-4 tornado. I received a phone call from a family member downtown, telling me there was a tornado just about the time the sirens went off. Much of downtown was reduced to piles of rubble. On the phone, the shout was that the power was out but as lightning lit up the sky, they could see that the brick building across the street was gone.

As we huddled in the basement, the pressure changed so much it sucked the drop ceiling panels up out of their frames and dropped them back down crookedly. The roaring was intense. As quiet settled, we ran up the stairs and to the front door only to learn we couldn’t get out due to trees down on the house. In the end, we learned how very lucky we were. Lives were lost. Many people lost homes or businesses or both.

I’ll never forget and I’ll always take tornado watches seriously. If I am out, I head somewhere safe. If I am home, I get organized.

My interior room is my half bath. This morning, I made sure that I had at least the minimum things in that room. 

• Cell phone- on charger staying charged.
• Purse, with wallet and keys
• Shoes and socks
• Flashlight and extra batteries
• Transistor radio and extra batteries
• Prescription medication
• Waterproof box: It contains my important papers from bank accounts to insurance paperwork

Clearly, if my house takes off like Dorothy in Oz, nothing will help. But, if I ride out a storm with damages, I will have with me the few essentials I would need.

I’ve a friend in Tennessee whose sons played football. She sits in the bathtub with one of their football helmets on. Her theory is that either something is coming down on her head or she is flying out of the house. In either case, a helmet would be a good plan. She’s probably got that right! Perhaps I shoud get a helmet too.

As of 10pm the Louisiana coast was experiencing the first feeder bands from Hurricane Gustav. Some of these feeder bands did prompt a few tornado warnings. The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma issued a Tornado Watch for the Eastern half of Louisiana to the Florida panhandle until 7am Monday morning. I expect this watch box to be reconfigured before the expiration of this Tornado Watch.

Here is a look from Satellite with the Tornado Watch Box.

Here is what the water temperatures look like

The 10pm advisory says Gustav is still moving northwest at 16 miles per hour and still has sustained winds of 115 miles per hour which still keeps it a category 3 storm. Its located 220 miles southeast of New Orleans.