You Gotta Love The Weatherrazzi

We had our first major spring storm here in Louisville last night.  Everybody's been glued to Dopplar radar all week long any way, watching the forecast for tonight's Thunder Over Louisville, so we already knew about the bad storms and tornados out in the mid-west this week.  Yesterday morning, the weatherrazzi were already talking about how we could get the grapefruit-sized hail that they had out in Colorado from this same storm. I'm no FEMA expert, but I don't think there's too many places that you go to and be safe from a hailstorm pelting down grapefruit-sized hail.  Maybe cowered in a corner of a bank vault, but that might be about it. That reminded me of the scene in the beginning of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" when Japan gets destroyed by gigantic hail.  One particular scene comes to mind - a young guy puts his briefcase over his head.  Like that's really going to protect him from getting hit by grapefruit-sized hail? He was the first casualty of the storm. 

Last night, shortly before 7:00, when people are outside cutting grass; when Little League games are being played; when people are going out to dinner; when people are doing their weekly grocery shopping, the civil defense sirens are going off, and the weatherrazzi appear in full force on the local channels.  A funnel cloud had been spotted close to Cherokee Park, so as a safety precaution they sound all of the sirens in the whole city.  I don't have a problem with that at all - anything can happen with the weather here in the Ohio Valley, so it's much better to be safe than sorry.  The storm moves through, and thank goodness we didn't get the grapefruit-sized hail, and there were only a few reports of some minor wind damage.  But the weatherrazzi stayed on the air until the last raindrop had dried on the pavement. 

The storms that we get here in the Ohio Valley come from the west, and our area usually gets hit first, since we're in the southwest part of the county.  With Super Dopplar radar and Storm Tracker and other aids, they can pinpoint to the minute when the storm will hit neighborhoods and particular parts of the county.  Needless to say, usually everytime we have a storm, it's already gone through the PRP/Valley Station/Shively areas by the time the weatherrazzi posts it on the TV screen.  Suchwas the case last night.  We had the heavy winds and some rain a good 10 minutes before we were warned.  The east end of town got hit harder last night, with power outages and some downed trees, so we were lucky once again.  As I type this, I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people at the stores right now getting batteries for flashlights for when the next storm comes.  And if they're anything like me and my family, we won't remember where we put them when the power goes out.