Honey, this a’int Kansas!
Monday night, after a long day at work, I had heard that we had some reportedly extreme weather headed our way. Over the past several months we’ve been having an inordinate amount of rain (one report stated that since November of last year, our area hasn’t had a completely dry weekend, which is rather odd to the say the least) and it’s made things a bit difficult to work outside and get things trimmed, planted, ornated, the whole nine yards.
It was already getting dark by the time I got home, so I went out to the backyard to check on the marigolds that I had purchased a few days ago. With the intermittent rain and my work schedule, I haven’t had the chance to put them in the front planter (and it’s muddy, which doesn’t help) so I’m trying to keep them watered and alive until I can get their little bodies deposited into soil where they can spread and grow.
Just as I was about to turn on the hose and douse them, a window popped open, and my wife stuck her head out to inform me she had already watered them that afternoon. Oh. Well in that case I won’t water them again. I did ask if anything else needed watering, or perhaps sheltering since we seemed to be having some precipitation pretty soon. She said “No“, as she was pretty sure everything was going to be well sheltered by the patio umbrella and the table it was attached to.
Coming back inside, I settled down to wait for the approaching storm. It was already starting to sprinkle as I headed into the house and I heard a few rumbles of thunder to the west, the direction the majority of our weather comes from. Within about 10 minutes, we were in the thick of it.
The nice part about living in a brick house is that you don’t really experience weather the way someone that lives in say a wood frame house does. Things like wind and rain you don’t hear in a similar way, it’s more muted due to the density of the brick. So, when I was seeing the sheets of rain coming down heavily, I wasn’t hearing it in the manner to which my eyes were giving me information. There were several lightning strikes, but generally I could see the flash of the lightning, but didn’t really hear the thunder as loud as it could have been if I was outside.
After watching the rain for a few minutes, I looked up at the gutter that hangs over the picture window in the back of the house and noticed (not for the first time) that it was being overwhelmed and sheets of water were cascading down and hitting the mulch that’s piled up next to the foundation. Many years ago we had a metal roof put on the addition to the house and it’s slanted, covering up a tarred roof that the previous owners had installed, probably when the addition was built. Soon after we had the same guy install new gutters and honestly, we should have known better. Never be the first customer in line for someone that’s learning a new trade. From one downspout that was installed upside down (even 2 visits later he still wasn’t able to identify the problem, and in a downpour a few days later I discovered the issue) to my supposition that the gutter over our back addition might be at the wrong angle, since the water from the metal roof pools at the wrong end and floods every time we have a downpour.
Regardless, I decided to go upstairs to see what was going on in that quadrant. Upon reaching the back bedroom overlooking the addition roof, I could see that the trees in the neighbor’s backyard were having a rough go with the wind shears occurring, along with the sheets of rain that were battering my neighborhood. It was about that time I started to hear (and then see) pellets of hail hitting the roof below me, and overhead on the main house. Thankfully they were the size of peas and not golf balls, as I had a new car in the driveway and no way to instantly protect it. (By the time I had gotten the garage squared away to put a car into it the storm would be over)
Coming back downstairs, I reported on what I had seen, and noticed that the rain was starting to come down in intensity. Too, the wind was dying down a bit as well, and within about 10 minutes or so it was all over. No rainbow, the sun didn’t come out and all was well with the world, but the sky to the west did lighten somewhat and by 8:20 I was able to go out and get some dinner. Kudos to the local gas & electric company for keeping the lights on, we only had one blip in the entirety of the storm, and our lights and internet stayed on.
Only after checking in on Facebook and other outlets did I discover the area was actually under a ‘restricted movement’ order due to the flash floods that were assaulting the area. Even in my Village some people had up to 3-4 feet of water in their basements due to the overwhelming intensity of how quickly the rain came down. After getting dinner I happened to drive by the local fire department, seeing that all the bays were empty except the one with the ladder truck, and many of the volunteers were milling around the firehouse, as apparently, they were all called in because of so many calls that were received from the aforementioned basement and other issues.
And, circling back to the title of this entry, there was a EF-1 tornado reported near Buffalo. Unusual for NY, but not impossible. We got some pretty good wind shears, but nothing like that. Just thankful no one was seriously injured, or worse. Houses can be repaired.