The Weather in North Texas.... rediculous!

It was such a warm evening... the air conditioner had kicked in and I didn't even need to grab a blanket when it did... it was a weird kind of warm yesterday evening....

Then it was lightening to the South of us when I went to bed last night... they said it was Power Lightening... VERY bluish white flashes of light. No thunder... weird. Jeff and I had looked at the weather update around 9:30 and the worst part of the storm was just North of Fort Worth, the path showed it would hit us dead on in about an hour.

I had just set the sleep timer on the TV, and being all cozy, was about to drift off to sleep as I listened to David Letterman. He was yammering on about something or another when he started to say "you folks in Allen should take cover immediately, there is a Tornado in the vicinity of Bethany and US 75!" I know that David Letterman had been a weatherman back in the day, but I'm sure he gave that up for the 'night' job. "I'm awake David!" I was instantly up and grabbing sweat pants and a sweatshirt and my Ugg boots. That's when I heard the dime size hail on the bedroom window.

Being married to a 'weather guy' I usually don't have to worry about the weather, Jody is always doing that. So I am able to go to sleep the minute my head hits the pillow. He always has 'a weather eye on the horizon.' He'll even tell me, go take a shower the storm will be here in 20 minutes. He'll stay up all night making sure we don't need to take cover.

Jody and Jolea had just watched the marathon of Storm Chasers, Sunday evening on TV, so they were all primed and ready to go. When the 'David' on TV said to take cover, everyone in our house was up and running around like a bunch of ants gathering supplies for the winter. We were throwing things in the hall bathroom, I grabbed my purse, the camera and a bottle of water. Jolea had her purse and had zipped her mostly packed suitcase shut in her bedroom (she didn't want her packing to be disrupted.) Jeff put on a jacket and went outside. Jody was already on the porch looking at the sky. They take that saying "keep a weather eye on the horizon" pretty seriously. A little too seriously. I think Jolea wanted to call her friend the Tornado chaser and have him come pick her up.

Yeah that's what we do when they say take cover, we go outside.... well we gotta see it! The TV showed 4 little spinning circles in the huge yellow/orange/red/pink blob that was moving across our county on the weather map. The spinning circles we just West of where we live. So we all looked to the West. We could hear the tornado sirens blasting in Plano (to the South of Allen), but the one on the watertower 3 blocks from the house was silent. The kids were commenting on how fast the clouds were moving when Jody pointed out the wall cloud to the South of our house. Then the temp dropped and we knew the worst was past us.

They are being hammered this morning in East Texas. And the weather maps show snow behind all this in West Texas. It's 63 here and there's still a chance of severe weather today.... no outside recess. It's supposed to be in the very low 40's by 5 today, the low tonight will be 31. That's just the way we roll around here. Hmmm should I wear this short sleeved t-shirt to work today with a parka?

Seems like years ago we had a defined Tornado Season, like Hurricane Season. It started in April and ran to June..... But since we moved back to North Texas 14 years ago there hasn't been a Tornado Season, unless you want to consider the whole year Tornado Season. Is this because of global warming?