Deluge in the backyard – Photo: L. Weikel
Since When Did We Move to Tornado Alley?
This afternoon’s weather was wild. We started receiving alerts this afternoon that moved beyond tornado ‘watches’ to full blown tornado warnings. It’s eerie to be told to ‘take shelter immediately’ when you live in eastern Pennsylvania.
We’re not in Kansas, Spartacus. And it’s weird to feel like we are!
Within minutes of receiving the alert via my cell phone, the skies rapidly turned dark gray/green and the rain cascaded from the sky in a deluge. It was startling how quickly our back yard went underwater.
Then the hail arrived. The size of large marbles, they pounded on our metal porch roof.
Non-Stop Thunder
But the strangest thing of all, which I was not able to capture even in a video, was a low, rumbling, non-stop thunder. And when I say non-stop, I mean that it just kept going and going and going – for at least a couple minutes.
It was the oddest thing. I kept thinking I was hearing things; that perhaps I was experiencing an auditory hallucination that simply sounded like it was non-stop thunder, but was actually just a strange way the pouring rain was impacting our slate roof. Or our front porch roof.
But no. Not only did I go outside to try to get a better bead on the origin of this strange thunder (only to sense that it was not coming from any rain impact with the house at all, but rather was coming from some distance south and a tad west of us). It was at a decibel level, though, that I could not capture with my iPhone (not to mention that the rain was simply so loud itself that it was drowning everything else out).
I was excited to see a good friend post on Facebook that she, too, had heard this odd non-stop thunder. I just wonder what it was.
Funnel Cloud Spotted
Later this evening I saw that what appears to be a substantial funnel cloud was spotted in Warrington, PA. I doubt that what I heard was emanating from there (that’s pretty far away from us), but I cannot say for sure.
I am grateful that my home and animals are all OK – and as far as I know, no one else sustained damage or injury either.
This was definitely intense. I hope all of you are safe and sound.
(T-912)
The new norm, as we north of you experience the same extreme weather events and excessive precipitation, and changing weather patterns, 2 years in a row and counting. Trees down, homes and businesses damaged and destroyed, plans altered to shelter in place, lives lost.
Still we construct multimillion dollar buildings in flood zones, cut down trees to build more parking decks with their impervious surfaces, stop at the gas station to fill our SUV’s, and support political agendas of both parties that deny or ignore a changing climate and the effects of a carbon based lifestyle on this planet and the future of our children. We are pathetic. We are selfish.
Sadly, your words nail it.