Life, Interrupted

Be ready! May 15-16, 2022.

(Of course chance of rain*....) *deluge

https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/total-lunar-eclipse-may16-2022/

How lovely! Someone uploaded this over at Weather Underground.

Here's a definition.

It's snowing in various parts of the Hill Country today.

Whoa -- Radar says it will be heavier in a few moments. Maybe I'm not taking a shower tonight....

Horizontally, no less. It's sixteen degrees below normal right now. I took a photo out the French door, showing the oak in all its changing glory and the playground across the way. In a bit I will check to see if it came out.

Got to learn how to turn off the flash (a non sequitur, but an important one...).

Very ADD day. Sigh.

And as I flash through -- happy anniversary, El and Steve!

It's so common, old cartoons cover it:

http://www.twolumps.net/d/20071001.html

My joints were screaming -- and I was supposed to catch the last matinee of X-Men: Wolverine with a friend. We both had buckets of rain falling on us as we left different parts of town -- heavy enough that he said he was glad they hadn't started working on his house roof -- might be more hail damage!

If there had been any counter-clockwise clouds, I would have canceled. Instead, we hit Kobe first for dinner, the X-Men and then Star Trek (I really wasn't that interested in Angels & demons or Terminator.) X-Men, as I suspected, was fun in its own way, and Star Trek was a good repeat and ticked two movies off his list for the weekend. I'll either see Adventureland before the end of the holiday, or put it on the Netflix list. Hope people had fun even in the rain!

The X-Men origins was the best choice because it needed the big screen for full appreciation. I'd also recommend big screen for Star Trek 2009 -- even once.

I used to leave NOAA weather radio on during storm season. W hated this, even muted. So, several tornado warnings went out and I did not know about them, so I was not in the closet where I should have been. I'm not back in the habit of leaving the station on. And I was not daydreaming out the window today, so I did not see the black strip across the northwest horizon until I went out on the balcony to shake out rugs.

Amazing how fast you can find two cats, a jug of water and the boom box, even after a move. I had not opened the D batteries and put them in yet. The bathroom seemed the best choice, so we stayed there while the hail rattled the roof.

The battery installation has been rectified. The car windows did not break, but the hail was nickel-to-quarter-sized, and did cause tiny dimples. It's a thirteen year old car, what can I say?

W had softball sized hail. By the time it was safe to go out and get one, they had melted to golf ball size. He lost the skylights. And of course sent me email to ask who fixes the roof.

A mutual friend had his front car window smashed on the way home, giving him a lap of glass and some cuts. But not really serious (like needing stitches) since his wife is patching him up.

EM is not coming tonight, since the warning extends until 9:00 pm and there is no covered parking. I will probably also look for the medical kit I used to keep in the kitchen.

Just in case. Time for a storm kit.

I grew up in tornado alley. Wish I had the full basement we had.

It's 1:30 am. I understand why the tropics and Latin countries take their siesta and then return to work or dinner later in the evening. Right now, the days are nothing but a blast furnace. I've been at the open mouths of furnaces, casting gold or observing glass blowing. The wind is not even neutral -- it's hot. It drains the energy from your veins. I can barely think, much less write or even remember what I was doing. Since I think I know where the next 75 pages of SPIRIT TRACKS is going, this heat fog is unfortunate at the least.

As an acquaintance said at the end of May: "Did anyone else notice we had August in May?" We also had it in June...now in July. I'm already plotting an escape in August.

August is often like this, but mid-July? We often have late afternoon thunderstorms kick up. Not this time. A few places north and south of Austin had brief downpours from the remnants of Dolly. The rest of us pray for a tropic storm strong enough to get to central Texas, but not landing as a hurricane.

I'm watering the trees now. When a 30-40 foot tree has wilted leaves throughout the day, and they don't perk up at night? That's a problem. That's a deeply stressed -- even dying -- tree. I couldn't stand watching some neighbors letting their trees die by inches -- I wrote a "care for your tree" epistle for the local neighborhood Yahoo Group -- in hopes that the people who own that dying Montezuma cypress start watering the tree before it's not half brown but all brown.

I figure I'll be up another 45 minutes -- brain coming back online. I'll be a night stalker yet. So, gonna go put out a hose. Technically, it's now my day to water. So might as well make the most of it. And there's CL to add to the pool -- night is best, otherwise it would burn off in about 5 minutes. Must do Tai Chi -- been too tired for it two days running.

Other people get up very early to do things. I used to get up at 7 am and garden until 9 am -- it was then too hot for me to work outside until almost sundown. Now, with my cycle reversed, I get half the days' chores done before 2:30 am.

It's unseasonably cool up where my family has a cottage -- cannot wait to get to Michigan. Hope you have some coolness where you are.

I miss San Francisco, and I haven't even written the report yet.

Talk about weather -- this monster cell opened up just north of us and kept growing, dumping TONS of water on us. W and I were IMing through Gmail -- I was pointing out that it was nasty and looking nastier -- and then there was a big lightning strike close enough to see the flash out of the corner of my eye. And I thought a friend had trouble with lightning in **his** neighborhood!

I encouraged him to a) hold off coming home and b) check radar himself. This was followed from him by, Oh, crap, it's getting worse...

Careening around the corner, I had time to see on the TV a magenta cell opening up. I passed this along, and said I was shutting down (already lost power once -- the backup power/surge protector did its job) with visions of another wall of water heading our way.

Silly me, it's been so long since I've worried about tornadoes that didn't occur to me.

It touched down in Georgetown -- no word on damage or injuries -- but I must say that I'm glad I haven't moved farther north -- a few years back there was a Cedar Park tornado that took the roof off an HEB -- about 45 minutes after I'd driven by the thing. Clearly, there is a line somewhere north of us that calls the weather. There's a tiny town near Elizabeth Moon's town that was wiped off the map by a suspected F5 tornado....

At any rate, the magenta dot shrank and vanished, the rain died down, W got home safely and went to class -- we went out later for dinner.

I shocked the pool big time -- more "tropical weather" heading our way.

EDIT: Tally lost in lightning strike -- garage door opener, hot tub control panel, and half a wall socket. (Go figure...) The garage door opener cannot be fixed until we move some stuff under it. The hot tub people are looking for an archaic board for us. And the plug? Well, I will get something to use to get the cd player hooked up from another source. And mention the socket when we finally move the A/C controls.

It is currently 42 degrees F. outside, and will not be any higher before, say, Monday. People have covered tender young plants or dragged the $%&^%! pots back inside. I just bought some herbs to plant in the new front planters, by the way. Fortunately I hadn't planted them yet. Those planters will be heavy when full.

Annoyed? Me? Surely not. I have my hand warmers sparkylibrarian made for me, and they help a lot. A few more on-line checks, mostly of various email accounts, and then I must get serious about shoveling the office. Web stuff later today.

If just wish bevhale was here, so if we go through to China, I'd have someone there who knows some pidgin Mandarin...