Red and Yellow Boxes On the Map

In the going-on-three-years that I've lived here now, and the thirty-plus years I've been visiting before that, I have never experienced--not even during hurricanes--the intensity of the weather and the weather warnings we had last night.

Early in the evening the TV ran a crawl warning of severe weather offshore. There were two different, very specific, warnings: one for up to 20NM from shore and another for 20 to 60NM out. I've never before seen anything more than generalized high seas warnings.

A couple of hours later I could see lightning flashes way off to the west.

Shortly thereafter, the TV began a crawl warning of severe thunderstorms. The lightning came closer. The crawl warned people to get inside, postpone travel and take shelter but not in a vehicle or mobile home. Lightning covered the entire western sky and was close enough for the thunder to roll through.

The severe thunderstorm warning began alternating with a tornado warning. The instructions were to prepare to move to an inside windowless room in a substantial structure. Again, no vehicles, no mobile homes and, if you're outside (where advice from the TV is going to be useless) lie down in a ditch and cover your head. The lightning started striking nearby and rain came down.

At that point the weather people broke into programming and put up a local map. They showed yellow boxes for the thunderstorm warning areas and a red box for the tornado warning and reported rotation in the upper winds and a sighting of a funnel cloud (although no reported touchdown). We were in a yellow box but just (and I mean by a couple of streets) outside the red box. The entire county was under one or both warnings and lightning was striking continuously all around the house now.

I gathered my shoes, wallet and phone and brought Bartleby inside. Although the cat was happy to be indoors she seemed unfazed by the light show until one bolt hit so close there was no time delay for the thunder. She jumped at that one.

Despite local impressions, the storm was dissipating as it came ashore. The rotational winds were south of us along the river, heading away and slackening. The clouds were losing height (as shown on really neat 3-D radar imaging). As the trailing edge of the storm front came ashore our yellow warning box was removed form the map and the county south of us came under warning instead. They also got a tornado warning.

The rain slackened and by 2 a.m. it was all over.

The good news is the sun is out this morning for the first time in over a week.