Spring Is Here . . .

We had the first of our spring storms yesterday evening.  Hail up to the size of quarter, but not to many that size.  But it went on for at least 20 minutes, with showers of hail intermixed with heavy rain.  We needed the rain but not the hail.

We get this weather phenomenon called a "dry line."  It shows up clearly on the weather plots and it is where hot dry air collides with cool moist air.  The result is humongous thunder storms and Tornados.  The storms take most of the day to brew up and around sundown they start with the lightening and thundering, rain and sometimes hail.  Often small Tornados form up and do damage to trees and power lines.  Lightening strikes the power substations and cause power outages.  The expression often used by the weather people on TV is that the "thunderstorms are firing off."

Occasionally, we get monster Tornados that tear up whole communities.  The big Tornados are classed as F-5s, the little ones are F-1s.  An F-5 hit a little community to the south of us maybe 10 or 15 years ago.  It wiped out houses on concrete slabs to the ground, it tore out all the trees and shrubs.  It literally cleaned off the grass.  Fortunately, it was a very sparsely populated area and so only a few folks lost their homes.  To my knowledge they never rebuilt, rather they moved off to some new location.

Last year Tornados tore up a part of Granbury, a town just south of us.  It was a killer and even now Granbury is just beginning to recover.  It had a lot of retirement tracts with mobile homes.  The good old "double wide" turned into death traps.  To top things off the drought has lowered Lake Granbury so far down that lake front property is referred it as desert front property.  The lake has receded so far that the boats in their lifts are hung above dry ground.  It is a strange sight to see. 

Weather here is fickle.  It gets hotter than Tucson, Arizona.  It is almost as dry as Arizona, but not quite - yet.  Lakes around here are way down.  Lake Weatherford is down 7 or 8 feet.  Some lakes like the one near Austin, TX is down 45 or more feet.  So the spring rains are welcome, just not the other stuff.

We have about a month of exposure to the dry line effect.  It occasionally shows up in mid summer.  That can really generate big thunder bumpers and bad Tornados.  It is worse in Oklahoma than here but we have had our lulus too.

No matter where you live there is some phenomena that affects the local area.  Earthquakes in California, hurricanes along the Gulf coast and in Arizona.  Spring storms all across the middle us into Ohio (Xenia, OH got wiped out by an F-5 Tornado some years ago).  The Atlantic coast gets its hurricanes too. 

There is no safe haven.  Spring brings the  severe storms and new life in the trees and soil.  There is always a price to pay.