Shelf Clouds – Photo: L. Weikel

Big Storms Coming

Early this evening, I’d settled into a comfy position on our porch glider and was finally allowing myself to get into my current book, The Murmur of Bees*, when I received a text. “Big storms coming,” said the first one. “For you guys,” came the clarifying text soon after.

This was from my son whose first career aspiration, as a preschooler, was ‘meteorologist.’ He’s been a storm chaser since birth, quite honestly. Or at least a storm watcher. (We probably only chased a few.)

And while he may not have chosen weather as his day job, he still watches it with a fervor we know and trust. Whether it’s Boston or here – he knows what’s going on.

I’ll admit, I was pretty well hunkered down for a good read, as was Karl. And while we intended to take a walk, as we do every day, I can vouch that walking right then wasn’t a high priority when I received Sage’s text messages.

Weather Channel – or Sage?

I actually thought he might be mistaken, since I’d not received any alerts on my phone. Surely we would’ve been told we were under a severe thunderstorm watch or warning if some big ones were expected in our area? My Weather Channel app has been remarkably accurate with those lately.

So I checked. Nope. No warnings or watches issued. In fact, the hourly forecast stated that at the stroke of the hour (ten minutes from then) the chance of precipitation was 16%. (Not to put too fine a point on those predictions, eh, Weather Channel?) Then the chance of precipitation jumped to 64% at the next hour. So yeah, ok. It didn’t look like anything huge was coming as Sage was rather direly predicting, but we would heed his warning and allow ourselves to be prodded into walking now rather than after a chapter or two more in our books.

Pictorial Progression

Below is a sample of the changes that unfolded in the sky as we took our walk tonight.

 

 

 

The final two shots (one at the top of this post and the other below) are of what we learned later this evening are called shelf clouds. And boy, were they ever harbingers of a wild, if relatively brief, thunderstorm.

Just after I took those last two photos, I texted one of them to Sage and asked, “Will we get home in time???” His response was a none too optimistic: “No.”

Lucky for us, though we did make it back to the house with less than five minutes to spare before the heavens opened. Why? Because we’d listened and trusted Sage rather than the Weather Channel!

(In fairness, I will disclose that I did receive a “Severe Thunderstorm Warning” 13 minutes before it hit. That wouldn’t have helped us if we’d been 30 minutes away from home!)

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(T-454)