Beware the green clouds
So a few moments ago the Community Wireless Summit was wrapping up and a bunch of us were hanging out saying our goodbyes. In the course of 5 minutes a beatiful sunny day with people going shirtless turned into a complete grey sky with large green clouds rolling through fast enough to make everyone turn around and look. In the course of 30 seconds a strong gust turned it to screaming winds. Tornado I thought?? Really loud sirens started sounding, we all scattered to the nearset building waiting for someone with a key to the dorm building to let us in.
So now we are sitting in basement of a dorm at Lindewood University listening to the sound doors clacking and recounting what for a lot of us is our first potential tornado. The quickness with which the storm took over a completely sunny normal day was amazing. It was really just long enough to for you to start thinking “Is this a tornado wind?”, by the time the thought crossed your mind your running.
…
So 15 minutes later the storm has passed over, all thats left now is some steady rain and lightning.
Photo taken by Matt:
April 2nd, 2006 at 11:49 pm
[…] So it looks like the storm we experienced left some serious devastation in its wake. Tags: […]
April 3rd, 2006 at 6:08 am
This is a picture of the arch about 30 minutes before the storm:
http://thingsisaw.blogspot.com/2006/04/stainless-steel.html
It was a beautiful day and I felt fortunate to be able to visit the arch with such clear viewing conditions.
This is a view of the observation room inside the arch about 10 minutes before the storm:
http://thingsisaw.blogspot.com/2006/04/at-top.html
My photos of the scenery outside the little windows weren’t impressive, so I didn’t keep them, but trust me, it was gorgeous in all directions as far as the eye can see. Suddenly, people started to notice a storm brewing. I didn’t think twice about it. We’d had lots of rain and gusty winds throughout the weekend. I was more focused on on descending the arch and getting to the airport to catch my flight. I only had 90 minutes or so, with a 30 minute drive and a rental car to return!
10 minutes later, I popped out of the base of the arch and found myself in a much changed situation. The sky was eerily dark, the winds were very strong, there was horizontal lightning, and the rain was starting to come down. I started to run through Riverfront Park to the parking garage–again, mostly because I was worried about catching my flight. I was only joking to myself about the perfect timing of the tornadic conditions with my dash to the aiport. People started running with me.
5-10 minutes later, after thinking to myself, “Wow, this is about the worst rain storm I’ve driven in in a long time,” I was trapped in gridlock on Westbound I-70. Red and blue lights everywhere. There was something blocking the flow of traffic up ahead. I got off the highway and navigated the city streets. Somehow I found my way around the jam and made it to the airport on time. It didn’t matter. All the flights were delayed or cancelled. There were sporadic power failures throughout. The runway was lined with emergency vehicles and the roof of the main concourse was leaking. Gate staff had no information and the status information on the monitors was clearly wrong–some indicating “final boarding” when there was no plane parked at the gate.
I made it back to Austin just an hour and a half late. Others weren’t as lucky. I can see now, that my propensity for tardiness helped me get out of the arch’s observation room before there could have been an issue. Would have sucked to have been trapped in there if it had been hit be a tornado. The whole time, I had been pondering more terrorist-related scenarios–probably because of the security checkpoint at the entrance. Just goes to show where the real power is on this planet.
–r