Saturday, April 07, 2007

Holy Snowflakes, Batman! (and a bit of humor)

Is this April or February? As I write this from within the warm, cozy confines of my apartment, I'm looking out watching snow beginning to accumulate on the ground here. Radar across the TX PH is really lighting up with bands of snow...some of it heavy in spots with a few 30dbz spots. With the temps below 30F for probably the rest of the day due to snowfall and wet bulbing, things should get pretty interesting here by tomorrow morning. I'll post some pics tomorrow evening sometime. I plan on hitting the road and take advantage of the photo op.

Although an easter snowfall isn't too rare in the TX PH, it is in other places like DFW, Temple, Sonora which is well south of San Angelo where a thunderstorm, heavy freezing rain and 30F is being reported. Fort Stockton is reporting freezing rain. The freezing line dips to south of Junction. Tyler and Longview are in the mid 30's and now reporting moderate and light snow.

Wow. The last time I personally remember such a late season arctic blast was many years ago when I was still fishing bass tournaments. It was the middle of April and the tourny was on Joe Pool Lake in the southern part of the festering armpit called DFW. It was a miserable event with temps in the mid 30's all day long and a light mist. I always remember when I freeze my kahunas off.

I remember another major severe arctic blast in the middle of April I believe in 1998 I think. We had been having a pretty warm spring up until then and everything was in full bloom. We had temps in the 20's at might and didn't get above 40 for like 2 days at least. It was a slow warm up after that.

I remember one other Easter when I was a kid that in the first part of April, there was brief snow event one day, but we were back into the 70s a couple of days later.
So, from my memory of about 35 years walking the earth in the North Texas area, three events? That's not a scientific conclusion...just what I remember :-) Indeed, this is all a very very rare event this late in the season. I can't recall off the top of my head it being this extreme though. I'd love to have the time to do some climatological research on it. I wonder what the global warming alarmists have to say about this? LOL!!

My friend Glenn Dixon noted privately to me that ever since I moved to Amarillo, the weather has gone bonkers. I think it has something to do with the atmosphere tryng to adjust to the massive and violent contortions that the North Texas Curse is undergoing in attempting to achieve harmoneous balance once again as a result of the huge vacuum created by my absence. Nature abhores a vaccuum. It sucks. ;-) Ssshhh! the global warming nazis and Al Gore may find out and I'll be foreced to move back to North Texas. LOL!!!

I know alot of folks, including myself, are pondering what May and June will bring? Well, we've certainly seen that warm, dry winters usually spell doom for stormchasers. With 2007 proving to be the polar opposite (pun intended) of the other wild weather years recently, it's easy to think that May and June will be one wild ride. it might even be like the old days when North Texas and Oklahoma has a significant severe weather season well into the last part of June before the dog days of summer ridging take over and shift everything into the northen plains. I dunno.

In looking into the crystal ball, thinks get real interesting next week, so stay tuned for that one. However, we are going to be struggling a great deal to get the atmosphere recovered. beyond that, I'm not liking what the GFS is trending towards....yet another east coast monster trough in another 10-14 days. I hope things end up being the opposite though as what usually happens with the GFS that far out. We'll see. But don't be too surprised in April turns out to be a sleeper month.

OK, that's enough rambling about that. I also wanted to thank some of the kind comments in supporting my bid for president. I think the other candidates out there like Guliani, Clinton, Obama et al have a bit more in their warchest than I do. I got like $2.34 in change and a couple of Whataburger coupons. ;-) However, the mudslinging and back-stabbing politics wouldn't be as bad as running for office in the world of stormchasing....as we have recently witnessed on WX-FLAME. LOL!

It's not just among stormchasers either as Rick wrote in the comments from my previous blog entry. It was a great example of how no good deed goes unpunished. Unfortunately, it is a story that is repeated too often. I have yet to see any other hobby or pastime or public service such as ours with such an extreme level of vile hatred, animosity, lunacy, hypocrisy, and psychos running loose. The only thing that comes to my mind is the World Wrestling Federation as I see alot of parallels and similarities....except that in the WWF, it's all staged. :-)












"I am THE World's Hella Greatest Chaser!!"

"I'm gonna smash your amber lightbars, bend your antennas, and rip off all your decals!"

"You're in my ego spotlight! Outta my way!!"

"You made a post with a spelling error, dangling participle, run-on sentence, and improper punctuation! You ruined my entire day! I hate OK!!"

"Hi, my name's Charlie. Want to join my stormchasing cult...err...'team'?"

"Infidels! You expressed joyous outbursts on your video! I curse you in the name of Doswellah!"

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. I look forward to blogging about severe storm potential next week. :-)

Lastly, I wish everybody a Happy Easter, Ya'll!

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