Our April contributed greatly to the whole "May flowers" thing..we had some snow and flooding rains right through last Friday. Saturday evening, more rain moved through our part of Ohio, cooling down our wonderful pre-summer day and taking some of the warmth away from Sunday that was there the day before.Today, the trend continued, with early morning cloudiness and the promise of rain in the afternoon and early evening. I really did not pay much attention to the talking weather head when he advised that some weather in the afternoon could be severe...severe for the most part for us is some rain, and a little wind that may bring down a few tree limbs or the like or every now and then take down power for a little while.
This afternoon, true to my earlier information, it began to rain...a cold rain, but not heavy, and the sky was overcast but not really threatening. As the afternoon continued, it became darker and darker outside, almost to the point of feeling inside the office like it does sometimes in the early morning when I come in...definitely needing the ceiling lights to chase away the dark. As the darkness fell, the rain could be heard pummeling the roof of our building...soon the rain sounds began to ring out with a more solid feel...and a trip to the windows revealed that hail was falling and bouncing off the building, coming to rest on the grass. The icy pellets were large enough to be easily seen from the second story windows...our guess was that they were about quarter sized.
As the time edged up toward 5 o'clock, the weather alert sirens sounded, indicating the imminent approach of damaging severe weather and urging folks to seek safe shelter in whatever protected area was available. Everyone in our office moved from the second to first floor, taking refuge in the Production "team room" (read storage area), which had just been cleaned (a convenient coincidence). As the sirens blared, nearly all of us fired up the cell phones in attempts to reach out to loved ones to assure that they were safe and taking the proper precautions to stay that way.
As soon as the sirens stopped, many of us decided that since the most severe of the weather was south of our location and predicted by the National Weather Service to continue that way, we would head home (northerly direction for me). The rain and hail was done for the time being, although the skies still indicated that there was more rain to come (see photos, Flickr album, right). I made it home without incident, and the next significant bout of rain hit just as I was getting off the expressway. By the time I got home, that rain storm had subsided and it was simply drizzling, the storm clouds continuing to move to the east. The storm for us was pretty much over except for the cool air that remained, the result of our area being on the Low pressure side of the storm front. It seems that this will continue throughout the night and the next day or so will also be cooler. Hopefully the warm air will return for the weekend; until then I will simply be happy if it stops raining long enough for us to enjoy the flowering trees for a few days before the petals drop off.
Hope that the severe weather missed you, and that May began pleasantly and with all the promise of a wonderful summer to come. Till later, much love to you....
v
