Although we tend to get puny ones when we get them...
...I sort of think we dodged a bullet around here today. I was at the coffee shop, and I did notice on the way back to Raleigh from points north that the rain was coming down in buckets. The sky was dark, then lightened as I approached the city, with one of those lines of clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, and although it was sort of cool when I left Durham, it was warm when I got to Raleigh. Sort of weird and...tornadic! I got to Cup A Joe and got my customary stuff, bought a paper (since the recycle box had been raided of anything worth reading...I won't give more than a mention to the psycho that rips the same parts of all the papers out every day. Who DOES that?), and sat down. Then the lightning really got going outside, the rain started falling heavier and heavier, and I opened my laptop and looked at the radar on the local TV station's website. Conditioned to the weatherman's talk of a "hook" in the radar of a storm, I noticed that there indeed was one of these in a storm immediately to the west of town. The sky outside was getting darker and darker, the bonk-bonk-bonk sound came on on the radio, so I did a refresh of the main page on the TV station's website, which confirmed that there was a possible tornado near Cary (west of Raleigh), and headed due east. People started walking outside to look at a cloud formation that was swirling, and I admit, I took a look, then got the hell back inside and did a quick scope out of where to run if things got crazy. Everybody was very nervous...I called a friend who lives between where I was and where the original activity was reported, and she kept me up to date on what the news was saying, that there was no sighting of a tornado, but the radar was reporting some rotation. People were nervous and either quiet (me) or sort of fearfully chatting with lowered voices...the staff propped the front door open with a chair, and there were sirens sounding from NC State down the street (I had always wondered if the sirens on poles down there were for tornadoes, or in case of an accident at the nuke plant 20 or so miles west...guess I found out today). I have never heard these sirens before, in my 16 years of living here, so it was quite eerie. The whole shebang passed within 10 minutes, and then the news was reporting that it was moving right over...my house. I still haven't been home yet, sort of trusting that nothing weird happened. That would be a dragggggggggg. Anyway...a weirdly mentally active afternoon, when all I was hoping for was to unwind and get a little work done. And how was YOUR day?