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Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

Games like that feel even colder when you are working them and can count attendance on your frostbitten fingers. Some of the most miserable winter nights I remember were covering prep soccer in South Georgia or juco baseball in the Florida Panhandle.

I've sat through three Music City Bowls and all were a brutal weather experience in addition to the team I rooted for face-planting every time. The last one was the worst. I got my son tickets for Christmas the year LSU played Notre Dame and we had to dress like we were going skiing. After shivering the day away at the top of the upper deck we went back to the shuttle bus pickup and I had to bribe our way on after realizing I lost our return tickets.

Looking back I think that game was what made my son drop any interest in football.
 
The rain has started here in SoCal. I'm not complaining - yet.

Moderate rain today, but Thursday, a deluge is forecast. I fear for my friends in the burned out Pacific Palisades.

I remember back how stupid it was after one of the Malibu fires. Surveying the scene, all that remained were chimney's. The next week, an earthquake knocked them down. After the quake, somebody said, Mother Nature had to finish the job. She's a bench.
 
Tornado warnings starting to pop off across Mississippi, and they'll probably continue for a lot of the evening.
These are the shipty tornadoes that move north to south, too, so they just keep coming in waves instead of being in one big line that is through and gone. It also makes them hard to judge whether they're coming for you or not. Usually once one of them is north of us we're in the clear. With these you have to do some calculations and educated guesses with the east-west trajectory.
 
Anything that spins tends to curve to the right in the Northern Hemisphere.

Last Memorial Day weekend I watched as a supercell northwest of me moved due east and then started drifting south toward me. Ended up less than 3 miles from an EF-3. Couldn't see it because it was rain-wrapped and at night, but even where I was, the wind was whipping at probably close to 60 mph, hard enough to make me sprint for the door.

Just keep that in mind next time if you reckon you're in the clear.
 
Anything that spins tends to curve to the right in the Northern Hemisphere.

Last Memorial Day weekend I watched as a supercell northwest of me moved due east and then started drifting south toward me. Ended up less than 3 miles from an EF-3. Couldn't see it because it was rain-wrapped and at night, but even where I was, the wind was whipping at probably close to 60 mph, hard enough to make me sprint for the door.

Just keep that in mind next time if you reckon you're in the clear.

Summer storms have a mind of their own, for sure. I've seen some track due east to west.
Normally, though, there are a handful of towns to the southwest that if they're getting a warning I know we'll be under the gun 30-40 minutes later. And there are also some lines of demarcation that if the storms cross, we're in the clear.
That's about 85 percent of our severe weather. These goofy north-south ones are about 10 percent and completely throw off my equilibrium because I don't have those same landmarks to reference.
 
When a tornado drops down 50 feet in front of you but it's quittin' time and you're not sticking around another minute.

 
That forty of Modelo can't wait.

I tried a sixer of Modelo not long ago and it gave me my worst hangover in probably 20 years. It tasted fine, but ....
 
Whiplash season in full effect.

Yesterday -- 2 inches of cold rain, high of 38
Currently -- a nasty thunderstorm, it's 63 degrees. Winds 22-30 mph for the rest of the day. Apparently we were under a tornado warning for a hot second.
Wednesday/Thursday -- calling for up to 10 inches of snow. This won't be like earlier this week with the ice. Temps predicted to be 24 on Wednesday, 30 on Thursday with lows in the teens both nights. Only question is how much we'll get, not if.
 
My house sits in the middle of two overlapping Alabama Power outage polygons. Otherwise I don't know of damage in my immediate vicinity.
 
Whiplash season in full effect.

Yesterday -- 2 inches of cold rain, high of 38
Currently -- a nasty thunderstorm, it's 63 degrees. Winds 22-30 mph for the rest of the day. Apparently we were under a tornado warning for a hot second.
Wednesday/Thursday -- calling for up to 10 inches of snow. This won't be like earlier this week with the ice. Temps predicted to be 24 on Wednesday, 30 on Thursday with lows in the teens both nights. Only question is how much we'll get, not if.
upload_2025-2-16_11-58-43.jpeg
 
All I know is today was the second time in the past 10 days that weather forecasters said our area might get a flurry or two and I woke up to 3-5 inches of snow to shovel. No complaints — Oregon's been hit worse than us — but it just shows how all the time, money and fancy blob graphics local TV stations devote to weather can't buy accurate forecasts.

Ah well … a little morning exercise is good for me.
 

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