Category: Weather

This morning the rain was falling down on my A/C. It is rather hypnotic, the rain. I really don’t know how to describe it. “teettle, teettle, teettle … ” and so forth. That isn’t a big rain, mind you. Merely found if you wanted to get up and look falls just enough drizzle to keep you in bed and not wanting out. And excuse me for being human but bonus points for having some good ol’ gal next to you who doesn’t talk about the hypno drip-drip-drip outside.

Yes, rain is romantic. It paralyzes. It puts one under. The great, wet anesthesiologist, Dr. (or CNA) Drip-drip. Not to be confused with the college clinic doctor who treated clap.

Unfortunately, I had to get up and go to work. I hear the rain may make a command performance this evening. That wouldn’t be bad at all provided the person who impersonates an elephant living right above me is out doing his/her/its shift work thingaroo. Just thinking of all this is making me sleeeeeeeeeeeeeepppppppppppppppyy …

 

Our local Channel 6 Beaumont weathermeister, Greg Bostwick, errs on the side of caution most times when hurricanes are concerned. He seems to think Tropical Storm Issac could might possibly may hit more of a western track which might put it somewhere in the Southeast Texas area. “We’re not out of the woods at all yet,” Bostwick said a few minutes ago. If I didn’t quote him exactly sorry. You get the drift. Or will.

Greg has been at Channel 6 for, I don’t know, a long time. He is the best TV weatherman or weatherperson in the greater (as opposed to not greater) Beaumont area. He comes off sometimes as a bit full of himself. That can happen when someone is for a long period, the cock of the walk or vice versa. I guess I can’t blame him no matter how much he annoys me at times.

All of that really doesn’t matter when it comes to hurricanes. Bostwick seems to stick his neck out sometimes when I don’t think he should, as in saying, no way Jose. Somehow I can’t imagine him saying that, by the way. But when he does sound cautious on the side of an approaching storm. I listen a little bit.

And I keep a close watch on the National Hurricane Center, the spaghetti models and the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters out of Keesler AFB, Biloxi, Miss.

No cats or dogs have been seen falling today during all the rain that has dumped here in Southeast Texas. Funny though, I did wake up to rain falling this morning after dreaming about a cat playing with a mouse. It was not playing, as in, playing before the cat snuffs the life out of the little mouse. They were playing. La la. And no it wasn’t Tom and Jerry. After that, I dreamed of a rushing river from which a deranged man ran from its edge shouting: “It’s a river of blood!” Now, mind you, after I woke up I wasn’t disposed to having those thoughts in my mind so I kept singing Fats Domino’s “Valley of Tears” within my head. The song finally went away. But my head exploded.

No tears here. It has been raining almost like it is supposed to around these parts. We only had about 33 inches of rain in all of last year, which was about half of our yearly rainfall average. We were around that amount prior to this rainy spell. I would like to see the yearly average return, at the end of year but not at the end of July! Hurricane season isn’t even broken in for the year yet. I don’t have to farm or work construction or fight fires, the latter as I once did, in the rain. I do have to get in and out of my car at work frequently and this can literally be a pain, even without the rain due to spinal craziness in my lower back, but with the rain it is as well a figurative pain.

Right now things are pretty dry, or at least there is no rain. But the weather service and even the never-wrong TV meteorologists say more rain and T-storms can return after midnight. As J.J. Cale wrote, and sang, as well as Eric Clapton recorded: “After midnight, we’re going to shake your tambourine.” Whatever.

Houston Channel 13’s new Super Duper Mega Doppler radar shows a thunderstorm about 3 miles away from my present location. I can hear the thunder and see the lightning. Does that not mean I see the thunderstorm or that we are experiencing a thunderstorm?

I think about things such as that. The one thing I wanted to be when I grew up that I didn’t reach was being a TV weatherman. My Dad even helped me make a map inside a clear plastic sleeve so I could write temps down upon it using a grease pencil. Man, if I had all the stuff out there today on the Internet I probably would be retiring as a weatherman right about now. Heck, I’d have to retire because you can’t have a fat, bald weatherman.

Actually, I am just as content to sit and watch the weather. My ideal place to live must have a perfect perch to watch storms. Down here in the humid-itity subtropical world you watch the storm blow in, the trees swaying like a Hula dancer and the lightning lighting up like an extraterrestial blood vein. Then comes the rain. You watch it puddle and drip ’till it drips no more.

Then you head inside the house for the A/C because the sun will come out and you will live in Sauna Land.

Since I have been sitting here, writing, the storm hasn’t seemed to move. It is “training” as the weather geeks say. Here is what the National Weather Service in Lake Charles says:

SIGNIFICANT WEATHER ADVISORY FOR HARDIN…JASPER…NEWTON… TYLER…JEFFERSON AND ORANGE COUNTIES…SIGNIFICANT WEATHER ADVISORY FOR BEAUREGARD…ALLEN…ACADIA…CALCASIEU…JEFFERSON DAVIS… VERMILION AND CAMERON PARISHES UNTIL 515 PM CDT… AT 415 PM CDT…NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS DETECTED A LINE OF STRONG THUNDERSTORMS FROM NEAR LAKE ARTHUR THROUGH LAKE CHARLES AND ORANGE TO NEAR JASPER. THE LINE WAS NEARLY STATIONARY. THE PRIMARY THREATS FROM THESE STORMS ARE CONTINUOUS LIGHTNING AND PEA TO NICKEL SIZE HAIL. SEEK SHELTER IN A SAFE HOME OR BUILDING UNTIL THESE STORMS HAVE PASSED. THESE STORMS COULD PRODUCE RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF ONE TO TWO INCHES IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME…RESULTING IN PONDING OF WATER AROUND LOW LYING ROADWAYS.

Enjoy the storm if you’ve got one and even if you don’t, be careful out there.