Boy am I getting worse and worse at this whole blogging thing. I blame it on my lack of wanting to be on my computer when I get home from work. I don't even check (listen carefully) facebook once a day! AH(gasp) I know! Your saying, she who had it up constantly doesn't check it.. No, no I don't. Thus myspace and blogging doesn't get checked either. I'm getting worse. However, I'm on top of my e-mailing, so send me one of those, I'll get right back to ya.
Anywho, I had a long day, but it didn't seem so long, which was very nice. I started out my day in a constant moderate rain in Kearney, Nebraska, heading out at 9am for a 4.5 hour drive to Wichita, Kansas. I finally got out of the rain near the state line, and had a good drive to Wichita. I got home, unloaded my car. Which really consisted of bring everything in and putting it in the room that it would later be unpacked in. I made some lunch, well put together whatever I could find, since I have very very little to eat in my apt and headed to work for a 9 hour shift.
Within 15 minutes of being at work, storms erupted southeast of Wichita and moved at a pretty good clip east across southeastern Kansas. We consistently had reports of golf ball and tennis ball sized hail, which can damage your car or other belongings quite well. Just as the storms were about to leave our county warning area, we finally started getting a couple of funnel clouds to go with all of the rotation that we'd had throughout the event. Both storms that had funnel clouds did produce tornadoes, but nothing really in our area. One touched down on the state line and moved into Oklahoma where it became deadly and killed 5 people (known at this time) and damaged a 20 block area through town. I'm not sure how big the town is, but 20 blocks seems big in a small town . Tornadoes continued with that storm and moved into Missouri and killed more people. Last I saw, 10 people lost their lives to the weather today. It brings it all in to perspective. We were lucky, all of the storms initiated in our area and moved out, we could be doing damage surveys tomorrow, but instead Tulsa and Springfield among others are, we are lucky.
It's difficult to know that a tornado has a lead time for a warning of 15 minutes and still many people die. We do what we do to save lives, and it no doubt does, but it makes you sad when not everyone listens or is able to survive a weather tragedy. I'm not there yet, but someday I'll be issuing warnings and praying that everyone is listening and taking cover, it changes you to be apart of something so big like a weather event i.e. tornado, flood, hurricane. Just some of the more stressful times of the job. I do what I do because I want to help people. I do enjoy studying the weather, but never wish for people to be hurt, or there to be damage. I'm still learning what it's like to be present and working on an event. We were lucky today, but when will the next time be?
I'm loving my job and I still have a hard time believing that I'm actually here and this is what I get to do for the rest of my life. Today, which is still Saturday the 10th to me, marks my 5 month date for being in the Weather Service. Many more stormy nights and days ahead!
Love all!
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