Blah blah rain

So, yeah. Weather. Ahem.

I think yesterday was the worst weather I've seen here. Probably. It's a little hard to remember, because once it gets to a certain point of badness I generally go away from windows and wait for it to pass. So maybe this is the worst weather I've had the opportunity to observe.

Around 2:30 I caught on that it was about to be bad. We were under Severe T'storm watch, but cycling west there were Tornado Warnings in the next county. I emailed my wife at home to let her know it was coming, so she had time to shut down her computer and do whatever else she had to do.

The view out my window was something. A near cloudline of black, backed up by a sick green cloudbank. Lots of movement in the clouds. My window is obviously westfacing, and looks out over a reservoir and then some factory roofs, so I can see a long way.

About then the sirens went off. Glanced outside again and saw a rolling wall of cloud, right over the building. I walked around the office, telling people the sirens were going off - no one else could hear them because they were, I don't know...talking or listening to music or whatever. But no one else heard it. Time after time I stuck my head into someone's office, said "Sirens are going off" and they'd look at me with faint amusement until they got quiet and sure enough...sirens. I went back into production and yelled out "Tornado sirens, folks. Turn off your machines please." And again, people thought I was joking, until they went out to shut the truck bay. So yeah. Sirens.

We all stood around the shop wall, pretty much the most secure place in the building. I suppose that if we had heard the "roar" I would have hopped into the shop closet or something. But it was a good place. Nice thing about it was you could peer through the break room and see the window onto the parking lot. There's a little tree right outside the window, then the lot, then some more trees. Serious wind, black wind. We lost sight of the trees across the lot pretty fast, just from the downpour. Then we couldn't really see the tree right outside the window. Couldn't have been more than five feet away. Fun.

Took me an hour to drive home. Lots of closed roads, flooded roads, trees down and signals out. And there was a second wave coming through. I was about ready to park and shelter in a Denny's when I got to some backroads that were clearer and got home. No power, but that's okay for now.

So yeah. Annoying day. And more rain today.