It Was A Dark & Stormy . . .

It was a dark & stormy night last night.  Weather radio about wore itself out going off last evening and night.  Not a good night for uninterupted sleep.  Friday night, the NWS put up a flash flood warning to begin on Saturday at 8AM.  Kind of a dead give away that they are expecting some bad weather.  Go about a quarter inch in the AM yesterday.  The afternoon storm didn't materialize.  They kept pushin back the evening storm arrival time.  Late afternoon  noticed that a tornado watch had put put out.  Around 9:30-10:00, my weather went off again with a tornado warning.  The cell with rotation in it was passing south of Bryan and over Ney.  I watched it on radar for a while.  When it was past Bryan, I went to bed.  I  About 10:15 . . . yes I go to bed early, I'm old, I get bored with tv and have nothing else to do . . . the Bryan sirens go off . . . There weren't any cells headed toward Bryan a few minutes earlier, so I turned on the weather radio.  The cell was several miles east of me, in the Evansport area.  Some weather spotters had reported seeing a rotating funnel cloud.  I'm thinkin maybe that was the cell that produced the tornado that tore up Lake Twp in Wood Co.  Anyway . . . it is a funnel cloud or cloud rotation till it touches the ground . . . then it is a tornado.  I am a trained weather spotter, too.  I went outside to look around and the skies were clear to the west, south and north.  There was lightning to the north east and the sky was dark to the south east.  I've never been able to get a logical explanation of what has to happen to have the sirens go off.  A couple years ago, they went off after the storm had passed.  There was a touchdown in that cell.  Maybe the sirens mean 'all clear.'  I just might make a special trip uptown to see if there are official guidelines for using the sirens.  They ought to publicize the guidelines at least during tornado week in April.  

One of the few things I liked about Lorain County was the very well organized Sky Warn program.  The HAM radio club was very good at setting up a net when severe weather was predicted.  HAM operators would check in to a specific person with reports.  That person relayed the reports to the NWS at Cleveland Hopkins airport.  A couple minutes later, those reports were going out over the weather radio.  I had a scanner for a while that I turned on to hear the HAM reports.  Can't get more up to date that that.  I always like to know when to duck . . . I eventually got my HAM license mainly to make reports.  They don't do that around here.  Guess they don't think anything is going to happen here.  My dad was a HAM operater.  He would check in with the Van Wert skywarn people.  Said they would tell him if a bad cell was headed his way.  I use the same internet to watch cells like the Van Wert people.  I just kinda like to know what specific cells are actually doing.  Dopplar radar is good but not that good.  

Back in the mid 90's during the month of June,  NE Ohio had a 3-4 week spell of bad storms, tornadoes, etc. several times a week.  One night there were several touchdowns in the county.  I was listening to the HAM reports on my scanner.  One guy broke in screamin, "touchdown in my backyard!!"  Not supposed to break in that way, but no one said anything about it on the air.  That touchdown took several houses down, then 3 or 4 of the steel towers that carry the big electrical lines.  Like I said before, can't get more up to date weather reports than that . . .