False Alarm

[Anonymous Poster]

Woohoo! It just came through! I've been sitting here listening to the rumbles getting closer and when the sky lit up like the fourth of July I knew I had to shut this thing down and watch the sky. I was enjoying the light show and the feeling of the thunder shaking the house. Everything was fine. Until.

I hear tick..tick..tick tick..Oh hel*! It's hail! Now everything is changed. Now it can be dangerous! Here we sit in this tin can we call a 'house', the kids and I. Hail always comes before a tornado, right? It's hailing like crazy.

"Git yer shoes on and put some pants on in case we have to run!" I go through the house, dragging teenagers off of the couch and out of the bed. "Git yer shoes on!"

"Why..what...what is it?'

"Just do what I say!" Jeez!! Do they always have to argue?

Then I get Fred on the two-way.

"The rain got here!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!" Then I drop my bomb. "And it's HAIL-ING!"

"Yeah?'

"Yeah!"

Why isn't he getting excited? I reminded him about hail coming before a tornado. He said.

"Heh..heh..heh..."

Why does it tick me off when he does that?

"Well, that depends" says he, "is the wind blowing?"

I look out the window and there isn't a breath of a breeze, but by now I really wanted there to be. He goes on.

"You usually don't have to worry unless it's windy as well as hail-y."

The kids are listening to this exchange.

"I made the kids put on their shoes." I said lamely, like having them put on their shoes was a grave injustice.

"Well there's no harm in that. They need to get their dead behinds off the couch on occasion anyway."

"I knew it!" This from Jake. "Yer such a ******." Kiss on my cheek to soften the blow of that opinion.

"Okay ya'll! Take yer pants and yer shoes back off. The coast is clear Ha ha.....ha ha." Weakly.

Nobody laughed. I thought it was funny.

 

[RichZ]

Hey, when you have a family, you gotta be careful!! I don't blame you!!

And you do have some wild weather down there in Florida. My parents retired to Florida, and there was a time that they both ended up in the hospital at the same time. My sister and I went down to take care of them. I got the first two weeks of them coming out of the hosptial.

My mother became abulatory first, and she wanted me to take her to the supermarket. We just got a few miles down the road when the sky got black, and hail stones the size of marbles started pounding the car. I had to pull over, and the ground was soon covered with a few inches of hailstones. I couldn't believe it!!! The roof of the car was dented, and when we got home my father calmly told me that one of their skylights cracked again from the hailstones.

I said, "Again???!!! This has happened before??? He said, "Oh only occaisionally."

I thought Florida was supposed to have nicer weather than New York. I don't think so anymore. I'll take snow, you can have the hurricanes, tornados and hail!!! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[Anonymous Poster]

We had one close call with a hurricane. Andrew. They didn't really know until the last minute where it was going to do the most damage. We put up shutters and took in plants and weatherized the animals, so forth. Then we got nothing but dark skies.

However, really interesting, we saw so much wildlife that we hadn't seen before. They knew to go north. Had a massive owl of some kind take up residence on the light pole out in front of the house. He looked so formidable there with the black sky as a background. He had to be three feet tall. The entire neighborhood sat and watched him all morning.

Then came the wild parrots. By the dozens. Beautiful colors and these long tails, they flocked to the tall oak trees and screeched to each other like they were making travel plans back, but some of them never left. Hawks, flamingos in the canals, a few odd eagles. All came our way until things settled down. It was really neat.

 

[r0GuE]

There's no place like home.... There's no place like home.... There's no place like home.... There's no place like home....
Get your ruby red slippers on /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Glad to see you didn't get scrubbed off the face of the earth.
Are Tornados common in FLA??
We get one every 5 years or so. Usually not too bad.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Well when we lived in the city I thought the only time they cropped up was when they spun off hurricanes. But since we've moved out to the sticks we hear about them around us all the time. Usually in the deep summer months when the tropics are stirred up but we had two touch down over the winter this year about thirty miles north of us. I've been in earthquakes (Big Bear Calif) twisters (Texas) tropical storms (Fla). I think out of all of them, so far Fla has been the easiest to deal with. But, we haven't been through a true hurricane yet.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Do you live in or near Sugar Land?

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Not too far away, it's about a hundred miles south east of us. Why is that where you're at?

 

[Anonymous Poster]

If you are did you get any of the hail?

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Yeah Sugar Land here. We didnt get any hail, a few minutes of rain and lighting/thunder but that was it. im about 5 miles away from the SL airport where a tornado touched down and i swear i saw a tornado near my house. Once i get the pictures i took uploaded ill post them.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Oh well! We're neighbors then! Howdy neighbor! The closest I've gotten to coming your way is Sebring. That's our closest 'big town'. Actually I think I might have gone further out 27 past Sebring but only because I was lost. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I'm in Wauchula. Hardee County