A Single Southern Guy in America

August 13, 2004

Weather Wonders

Well, gentle readers, it is Friday and it is time for me to depart to beautiful DeGray Lake, Arkansas for fun and fellowship with family. My cousin Randy over the past year has gotten rather involved in triathalons and that sort of athletic pursuits. And, there is a rather large Half Ironman event there this weekend, so I'll be heading down to camp and cheer him on as he competes in my old lake stomping grounds.

Unfortunately, someone has stolen my summer. Now, I don't mean that the end of summer is upon us. I mean it has been a rather cool summer. Last night, I eased down to the gas station and 'll be damned if the temperature reading from the Jeep didn't say it was 55 degrees. Now, many folks know I love the heat of summer. I like the 90-100 degrees watched with 90-100% humidity. Yet, this past week has been marked with highs in the low to mid 80s and lows in the downright chilly range. This does not please me. In fact it gives me displeasure. It's fall football weather in the middle of August and I'm starting to get confused. Global warming my foot.

While we're on the topic of weather, how about that Hurricane Charley? Pretty stiff storm it looks like. From watching all the radar summaries, I find it fascinating how a hurricane continuosly throws thunderstorms ahead of itself to the north-northeast. It's almost like watching a boxer from above exclusively throwing roundhouses and jabs from his right. And I suppose those storms and the ever present possibility of tornadoes from the same is what would scare me more than the hurricane landfall.

I remember when I was living in Atlanta back in 1998 when Hurricane Bonnie came in from the Gulf, eased over Atlanta as a tropical storm/depression, headed back to the Atlantic, reconstituted and slammed North Carolina and Virginia. I'll always remember the way those clouds looked.

In any event, I'll head on down to the lake in these cool days of summer, pitch a tent, and enjoy the fresh air, even if it is relatively dry air. We may venture back up to Little Rock for a party tomorrow p.m., but that's up in the air. Until then, everyone have a safe and fun weekend, and you Floridians and Georgians in the path of Charley, keep your head down for a few more hours and be careful.

UPDATE:

You know everytime there's a large hurricane coming into land, the reporters head out to the probable landfall areas, wait for the wind and rain to get intense, shuffle out into the storm dragging some hapless cameraman with them, and proceed to file reports. Invariably, they say things like "as you can see the wind is pretty intense right here (no $hit?), it's raining pretty hard here (you don't friggin' say?), you can see the storm surge is breaking up this (rather, small poorly constructed) dock (yep I can sure see it Roscoe!)." Just once I'd like to see a reporter speaking from a secure storm shelter with a remote camera outside and say something along the lines, "You can see how intense the wind and rain is, I sure am happy to be in here dry and warm. Back to you Wolf." "Thanks John, and don't drink too much cocoa while you're in that bunker."

Posted by Adam H at August 13, 2004 05:29 PM ~ Link Cosmos | Trackbacks (0)

Comments

Just wanted to stop in and say hi. I hope you have a great week.

Posted by: Tam at August 15, 2004 11:50 PM

Well, so far we have managed to get Alex, Bonnie (mostly just rain and tornadoes), and Charley. Boy this place is different from Arkansas.

Posted by: Chelle at August 16, 2004 08:56 AM

Have fun!! People here in Bama are already covering up theie swiming pools.

Posted by: Junebugg at August 18, 2004 02:13 AM