So Much Weather, All at Once

Amazing storm blew in out of Texas Monday. (Damn you Texas!) The forecast had called for rain, but when I stepped outside at around 10 a.m. it was so dark I had to turn on the porch light. Across the river, Tori was in her classroom and saw the sky turn green. The school told them there were tornado warnings, so keep the kids away from the windows. The kids, of course, immediately freaked out, and every time there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder they all screamed.

There was a LOT of lightning and thunder, and the wind swept in with a fury. This is how strong it was – the wind blew a train off a trestle! I'm not kidding, check out the video here. I would have bet that wasn't possible, but looking at the video, I get it. All those box cars made a big sail for the wind barreling down the river, and as they went over, they took the locomotive with them.

That's the train trestle that's part of the Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi, the same bridge Tori crosses twice a day to and from work. When she headed home, the four-lane roadway was reduced to one lane because of all the emergency vehicles.

In our neighborhood, we got a lot of wind and rain, but the power stayed on, at least here. But it wasn't all sweetness and light. Right around the corner a power pole blew completely over. A swath of houses and stores a couple of blocks wide and almost a mile long were blacked out south of the downed line. This is why I'm glad I'm a northerner. We were fine. When I drove by the morning to take the kids to school, the pole was still lying across the road.

See, this is what happens when you build a housing development on what used to be a swamp. Sure, you can put in a bunch of fill, and you can put in a drainage system, but when you get that much rain that fast, some of the stuff you stuck in the ground doesn't stay.

We've been waiting for more today, but apparently it's mostly move on east. (Sorry Florida.)

But boy, it can change fast, can't it? It's not that we have different weather than we had back in Oregon. It's just that we've got so much weather. Often all at once.