1
September 21, 2004 at 10:45am
by joel This is the third beautiful day we’ve had in a row, with a few more reportedly on the way. A bit chilly in the morning, but the sky is just the right shade of blue with only a few wispy clouds; they weren’t even there yesterday. Just incredible.
Not to mention, a stark contrast to this past Friday. The remnants of Ivan came through and brought us our second tornado scare in a couple of weeks. The previous one was with the remnants of Francis, and there were only one or two in our area. This time it was pretty severe, with somewhere between 30 and 40 sightings, and various scattered damage throughout Northern Virginia and Maryland. Don’t think any actually went through the District, but they were under warnings, too. The Post had a couple of articles in the Sunday paper (here and here, but you’ll need to register first), and a pretty decent picture here (might not need registration for that one).
That picture is of the one that went through Chantilly, which is where I work. Another one was reported just west of Haymarket, which is much closer to my house than I tend to be comfortable with. The warning a couple of weeks ago gave us a chance to figure out what the heck to do (tornado shelters aren’t exactly common in No. VA), so this time we had the pantry floor cleared out (just enough room for the two of us and the girls), the cats in the carrier under the kitchen table (on reflection, under Andi’s desk might have been a better call — the only window there is blocked by the loveseat), and had Alexis practice dropping everything and running to the pantry when we said so :).
It didn’t help the tension any that the main news radio station, WTOP, had both of its FM frequencies out in our area. Only one of its two AM frequencies came in, and that barely, with lots of static. We usually have the computer off during storms, but we ended up turning it back on and relying on their online audio feed to know what was going on.
But that’s over and we’re unaffected, short of being a little more prepared for the next time. For now, I can relax and enjoy the perfect sky…
1 Comments
#1. Jean 09.25.2004
You’re certainly smarter than my family. We had one in Greene county – about 2 minutes from central grounds at UVA, where I was working on the 3rd floor of one of our buildings. Man, I work with some smart undergrads, grad students, and professors, but we were content checking the storm’s progress…by wandering to the window every few minutes. The professor heading the lab finally came in on his way out to inform us that *he* was going to the basement, and a grad student who’d just arrived ushered the rest of us down as well. Without even saving data! Poor woman was driving in in the deathly calm, and hearing on the news about how to get out of your cars, get out of the car and seek shelter – and she couldn’t find a parking space.
Was on IM with my mom a few hours later, when they were hitting NOVA; told her that my friend’s parents could see one, and they live in the next development over, under a mile away. What do my parents do? They go outside to look for it. After a few minutes without her return to the computer, I called to request that they maybe come inside, and, oh, possibly shut the door while there’s a tornado within visual range. (They didn’t even see it, Dad was a bit let down.)
At least I didn’t have to worry about the cats while I was at work; my studio apt is kind of below ground level, so while I have windows all you see are the bricks keeping the hill from the wall and the ground isn’t until you go a few feet up; not too much to worry about with wind there.
Glad ya’ll are smarter than our family! We’re too busy wanting to see the darn things. (“Oh look at that, the rain got completely horizontal in the last three minutes. I wonder if that’s bad.”)
Love,
Jeannie