Saturday, January 14, 2006
Six to ten inches???
Git yer minds out of the gutter, folks. This is not a spam email.
Snow! It's in the forecast! We've actually hit the 60% POP (probability of precipitation) point! For two days in a row!
And, what's practically guarandamnteeing this will actually come to pass is the fact that OmegaGranny is hosting a G family gathering on Sunday!
Woohoo! OmegaMom is doing the Snoopy dance right now!
Driving on snow and ice! Yay!
The ostensible reason for the G family gathering is that Unka Bill, a dinkum bloke from Australia, is in the States for a visit. The sad reason behind his visit is that OmegaGranny called him and said he'd better come this year, because it might be the last chance he gets to see his mom. Great-Grandma's short-term memory is going swiftly, sigh. But Unka Bill, being the kind who always sees the glass as half-full, goes to visit her every day, and says it's like a brand-new visit each time.
OmegaMom has kept her eye on the news from the Great Plains with dismay lately. While we here have had a drastic lack of precip for the past, oh, five months, folks who live in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, have had none for much longer. The images of grass fires sweeping through small towns in OK is saddening; Mr. OmegaMom hales (hails?) from that part of the country, and OmegaMom is constantly on edge that some of the in-laws might be impacted by these fires.
Then there's the image of the 300-mile dust storm sweeping through northwestern Texas and western Oklahoma. This brings back memories of Lubbock. Springtime in Lubbock was always a time of dust storms mixed with hellacious thunderstorms. Mr. OmegaMom and I always called them "Wrath of God" storms; you could see them approaching for hours, and then they would hit. Typically, you'd end up with a layer of mud on the window screens and the car. God knows, out driving in the Trusty Justy during one of these events was a bad idea; TJ was (and is) such a light car that these winds would just skitter the car across the road. Lubbock, sitting on a huge plain (the Llano Estacado--Staked Plains--so named because the Spanish explorers had to pound stakes into the ground to keep track of where they had been already, because the landscape was so flat and featureless), is the recipient of windstorms that have had hundreds of miles of flatland to gather up steam. Think of a juggernaut of air, falling down to the ground from the mountaintops of New Mexico, and hitting flat land...and flat land...and flat land...for hundreds of miles. That airmass has a chance to build up a shitload of angular momentum. Then the cold, dry air (dry. Really, really dry.) slams right into nice, warm, moist airmasses oozing upwards from the Gulf of Mexico. This particular turn of events is called "The Dry Line", and is the cause of all those damned tornadoes that rip through the Great Plains in springtime. So weather was a Topic of Conversation in Lubbock. Mr. OmegaMom, coming from the Land of the Dry Line, was an avid tornado watcher. He tells tales of being a teen and going out with his buds in pickup trucks and chasing tornadoes (beer was involved). It's a wonder he's still alive. OmegaMom recalls one particularly nasty storm that hit Lubbock--the one where our bosses had us evacuate down to the safe in the basement. That evening, when both Omegas had arrived home, not-then-Mr. OmegaMom regaled OmegaMom with tales of him and his graduate assistant--rather than safely hiding in the basement--barrelling up the stairs to the rooftop of their Texas Tech building and watching the roiling, spiraling, GREEN (anyone from the Midwest knows what "green" means in terms of clouds and weather) clouds directly above them, dipping tentative hooks downward. OmegaMom was Not Amused that evening.
Minor Accomplishment of the Week: OmegaDotter spent the entire night in her own bed!
The ostensible reason for the G family gathering is that Unka Bill, a dinkum bloke from Australia, is in the States for a visit. The sad reason behind his visit is that OmegaGranny called him and said he'd better come this year, because it might be the last chance he gets to see his mom. Great-Grandma's short-term memory is going swiftly, sigh. But Unka Bill, being the kind who always sees the glass as half-full, goes to visit her every day, and says it's like a brand-new visit each time.
OmegaMom has kept her eye on the news from the Great Plains with dismay lately. While we here have had a drastic lack of precip for the past, oh, five months, folks who live in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, have had none for much longer. The images of grass fires sweeping through small towns in OK is saddening; Mr. OmegaMom hales (hails?) from that part of the country, and OmegaMom is constantly on edge that some of the in-laws might be impacted by these fires.
Then there's the image of the 300-mile dust storm sweeping through northwestern Texas and western Oklahoma. This brings back memories of Lubbock. Springtime in Lubbock was always a time of dust storms mixed with hellacious thunderstorms. Mr. OmegaMom and I always called them "Wrath of God" storms; you could see them approaching for hours, and then they would hit. Typically, you'd end up with a layer of mud on the window screens and the car. God knows, out driving in the Trusty Justy during one of these events was a bad idea; TJ was (and is) such a light car that these winds would just skitter the car across the road. Lubbock, sitting on a huge plain (the Llano Estacado--Staked Plains--so named because the Spanish explorers had to pound stakes into the ground to keep track of where they had been already, because the landscape was so flat and featureless), is the recipient of windstorms that have had hundreds of miles of flatland to gather up steam. Think of a juggernaut of air, falling down to the ground from the mountaintops of New Mexico, and hitting flat land...and flat land...and flat land...for hundreds of miles. That airmass has a chance to build up a shitload of angular momentum. Then the cold, dry air (dry. Really, really dry.) slams right into nice, warm, moist airmasses oozing upwards from the Gulf of Mexico. This particular turn of events is called "The Dry Line", and is the cause of all those damned tornadoes that rip through the Great Plains in springtime. So weather was a Topic of Conversation in Lubbock. Mr. OmegaMom, coming from the Land of the Dry Line, was an avid tornado watcher. He tells tales of being a teen and going out with his buds in pickup trucks and chasing tornadoes (beer was involved). It's a wonder he's still alive. OmegaMom recalls one particularly nasty storm that hit Lubbock--the one where our bosses had us evacuate down to the safe in the basement. That evening, when both Omegas had arrived home, not-then-Mr. OmegaMom regaled OmegaMom with tales of him and his graduate assistant--rather than safely hiding in the basement--barrelling up the stairs to the rooftop of their Texas Tech building and watching the roiling, spiraling, GREEN (anyone from the Midwest knows what "green" means in terms of clouds and weather) clouds directly above them, dipping tentative hooks downward. OmegaMom was Not Amused that evening.
Minor Accomplishment of the Week: OmegaDotter spent the entire night in her own bed!
