by luddite lady on 21 Aug 2009 01:58
Holy foooock! Nobody told me that I was going to be the resident tornado dodger while Dive is in La Jolla. Tornadoes do occur in my neck of the woods but very rarely. They are so rare that I'm not in the habit of checking the weather forecast for tornado warnings before heading out to one of my kids' soccer games. I should have though this evening. As we drove towards darkening skies, I turned on the car radio to see if they were calling for a storm. A tornado watch was called and quickly became a tornado warning with reports of funnel clouds touching down a little to the North of us. We often get bad weather that blows over quickly. As long as there's no lightening, the game goes on. Even when there is lightening, we all sit in our cars for 10 or 20 minutes, and more often then not the storm ends and the kids play. But this was entirely different. My brave son said we should not turn around for home until we reached the soccer field and warned the others that might still be there, unaware of the danger. Sure enough, when we arrived, there were about twenty or thirty people standing by the side of the field and looking at the advancing clouds and wondering if the game should start or not. Once I told them what I had heard on the radio everybody cleared out pretty quickly. Unfortunately, we didn't get back home before the storm hit. The sky was charcoal grey and the wind really whipped up. And then the rain struck. It was like we were suddenly going through a car wash. The radio station was reporting a funnel cloud had touched down right near their studios downtown. What a fun drive! We managed to get off the road and into a donut shop where we sat for a good long time until the storm passed.
There is no damage to my place and it doesn't look like any tornado struck my neighbourhood. However, the wind was high enough to knock down a few trees on the street. The radio is now announcing at least one death.
Sheeesh. Even though it's all calm now I think I'll dig up my bike helmet just in case.
I hope they're all enjoying pleasant ocean breezes in La Jolla.
In Dallas, the only game that really mattered was in the word gamelan.