Eight Feet Deep

 We’ve had a bit of “weather” this afternoon as they call it in these parts.

 An apparent tornado struck the Dowlen Road shopping area of Beaumont where Wal-Mart, Parkdale Mall and all the other chain stores and restaurants reside. There have been injuries reported and reportedly a roof collapsed in the Kohl’s store, trapping some people. A Beaumont Enterprise photo I saw show several cars overturned in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Nasty stuff.

 The local media reported it happened about 2 p.m. That was about the time I got back downtown after returning from Lumberton, about 12 miles North. On the way back I stopped and paid my insurance at a place on Dowlen Road across from the mall. So I just missed it.

 I did notice a big ugly wall cloud with what appeared to be a funnel-like object hanging down a tiny bit when I got back to my office. The cloud was to my West. I looked at the KBTV weather radar when I got to the computer and saw what looked like a pretty stout thunderstorm cell just to the West of Beaumont. It was certainly nothing to write home about.

 There were no tornado watches per se and no warnings that I know of, although of the latter I wouldn’t know for sure. I say watches per se, there were watches issued for “tropical funnel clouds,” which describes the partial funnel that I saw. These are funnel clouds that develop and usually don’t make it to the ground. If they do, the warning I saw on the Weather Channel said, the can cause damage. Whether this was a tropical one, I don’t know. Just checking the Beaumont Enterprise Website comments it appears not everyone agrees it was a tornado but could have been straight-line winds.

 Speaking of tropical funnels I see what could be several-in-the-making outside my window at the bottom of a big black cloud. I can see rain pouring down on the Interstate, but not outside.

 Maybe, just maybe, we have missed the three Atlantic-Gulf tropical systems that have been stirring around out there.

 Hurricane season over the past four years has taught me to never feel relieved about missing a hurricane or tropical system that could turn into a hurricane until it is gone and can’t jump back out into the ocean, re-form and strike once more.

 Weather forecasters had put Rita’s landfall in September 2005 at several places on the southern Texas coast including the area around Corpus Christi which is almost Mexico. (I’m sure Corpus Christians would be glad to hear that!) Instead Rita made landfall around Johnson’s Bayou, La., just east of the Texas border. It ended up wreaking havoc more than 100 miles inland.

 Something similar happened with Ike last year and Humberto in 2007 sneaked up on us kind of like the Tropical Storm Claudette did to Florida this morning.

 Here on the uppermost Texas coast we are supposedly under the influence of a tropical wave that allegedly was to bring us rain but I’ve yet to see anything more than a couple of drops.

 I know the local TV weather gods can’t be told anything but I wish someone with some clout — like their bosses — would tell them to stow their air of certainty when it comes to forecasting hurricanes. I have seen some weather geeks, probably not meteorologists, who take the three- and five-day cones the National Hurricane Center issues as the last word on storm tracks. Hey dips**t, it’s a cone, that means the hurricane models show the storm can end up anywhere within that cone, north or south. The storm might not even stay inside the cone.

 Even if I was the smartest man, weatherman, on Earth I would not say “we have nothing to worry about” until we truly have nothing to worry about.  I mean, what if some people were actually stupid enough to believe what the weather man says and he ends up getting caught flat-footed with the water “six feet high and rising?”

 Perhaps because we move kind of slow down here in Texas is the reason why trends which have taken place elsewhere don’t always get to the Lone Star State posthaste. Take, for instance, bans on using cell phones while driving.

 A new law will take effect on Sept. 1 in Texas — on a local-option basis — which bans the use of cell phones in school zones. By local-option, I mean that the governing jurisdiction of where the school is located has to first approve it. If it is in a city, the city must approve it and county commissioners must give their approval if it is in an unincorporated area.

 I suppose the Texas Legislature and Gov. Good Hair Perry, in their infinite wisdom, decided they didn’t want to get get stuck as being the ones who outlawed using a cell altogether while driving. That is, no matter how many people get killed because of people yakking on their phones and not watching what they are doing.

 One thought has piqued my curiosity. Since Mothers Against Drunk Driving is largely responsible for one no longer even feeling they can drink one beer and drive without worrying about a DUI charge, I wonder their thoughts on cell use and driving?

 Admittedly, I have not had a chance to do extensive research but in a quick search of the MADD Web page all I could find was a resolution supporting the use of cell phones in vehicles for reporting drunk drivers. I wonder where they really stand?

 Although the federal highway safety agency tried to sit on studies showing even hands-free use of cell phones is deadly, other studies show those talking on the phone are four times as likely to crash and are as likely to wreck as drivers with a blood-alcohol content of .08.

 I admit that I sometimes use my phone while driving. It is a habit that I am trying to break just as seeing — when I was as a firefighter — numerous folks dead who didn’t wear seatbelts got me in the habit of wearing one. Sad to admit, I once used to drink and drive. Hell, just about every Texan who both drank and who drived cherished the long stretch when the state had no open container law or at least one that had no teeth. Times have changed now. You can get ticketed for an open container and can be arrested for DUI for almost having alcohol on your breath. Don’t get me started on those who can serve and die for their country unable to get a drink because they aren’t 21!

 And so it goes. My libertarian friends don’t like the idea of government playing nanny, and I don’t like it a whole lot either. But safety aside, a lot of practical utility comes from laws like mandating seat belts, DUI and banning cell phones. This includes money spent on insurance premiums, taxes we pay to support hospitals, worker productivity (having your worker show up instead of he or she being in jail, the hospital or the morgue), to list a few.

 So, I imagine one day completely giving up talking on a cell and driving. Unlike many people I see every day, I don’t stay on the phone from the time I get in my auto until I disembark, and then some.

 I can live without driving and cell chatting; perhaps even live because I am not driving and talking on the phone.

 It’s hard to think about cyclones hitting elsewhere on the globe when you’ve lived your life generally hurricane-free, then all of a sudden the place where you live becomes a hurricane magnet during the past four years (Rita, Humberto, Ike).

 Now little areas of disturbed weather — most of which are between the West Africa coast and the West Indies — are being watched for possible hurricane development. Until these storms, including Tropical Depression 2, get closer to the U.S. we will play a waiting game to see if the unwelcomed trend will continue.

 But in the meantime, folks like my friend Paul and his family are having to deal both with heavy rain and thunderstorms from a typhoon as well as earthquakes.Paul, a friend from college and a de facto consultant on the quirks of Word Press which powers this blog, lives in Tokyo where he reports the worst seemed to have past from earthquakes even though the shaking there was pretty substantial — enough for his kids to get under the kitchen table.

 At least hurricanes develop and move relatively slow — Humberto being an exception — so one can see them coming. But earthquakes are something else. Thankfully, we don’t have many earthquakes where I live on the upper Texas coast. I’m not going to say they don’t happen. There have been small ‘quakes detected within a 100-mile radiius of the area, but not those high up on the Richter scale.

 I don’t know if any place on Earth is without the threat of some kind of natural disaster: tornadoes, sandstorms, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes, avalanches, forest fires, floods. And of course, no one is really safe from some kind of cosmic debris like a meteor. Nature has many ways to get ya!

 But that’s life in the big Universe. There is nothing anyone can do about it so just sit back and enjoy the show. Be sure to board up your windows, stock up on Vienna sausages or do whatever you need to do to prepare — if you can prepare — first.