"Climactic" change - and I wish I didn't know this shit.
How many feet did the hailstones accumulate?
Like everything in America, suffice it to say, I'm sure it didn't measure up to what nadin saw in Mexico City.
I still have no idea the depth of anything, or how bad it all was, even 24 hours later. But I’m sure that dutch508, although on the other side of the Sandhills and hence insulated from all this, can verify that yeah, it was pretty big and pretty bad, one for the record books.
It’s a good thing the Big Zero hasn’t yet nationalized property insurance.
Remember my particular circumstances; no television, no radio, and I was so tired when I got off work yesterday (Wednesday) that I just came home here and went to bed without checking the newspapers--and checking on the internet wasn’t an option, the antenna’ed internet being out.
The neighbor had been here about noon on Tuesday, and had me move all the motorized vehicles under cover, which I did, but not having been warned by nadin on Skins’s island, I was skeptical about it. I slumbered off, being tired, sore, and aching, until circa 2:30 p.m., when suddenly the house (all its windows open) took on the temperature of a beer-cooler, and I abruptly awoke.
It was hailing cats-and-dogs outside, but of course I can’t hear. It was a surprise to me.
Being born and raised in Nebraska, I’m of course a survivor of countless hail-storms, but I’d never until Tuesday afternoon seen hail larger than small marbles or mothballs. The hail I saw was a little bit larger than golf-balls, although I’m sure dutch508 can verify that reports of softball (not baseball, but softball) sized hail clattered down from the skies…..and lots and lots of it.
Really, I kid you not; just as with tornadoes or live rattlesnakes, I’m probably only one of six or half a dozen Nebraskans who’s never seen such large hail, only small hail. I don’t
miss seeing such things of course, but it makes me feel less than Nebraskan, not having done so. Probably even the sissy big guy in Bellevue’s seen all three such sights.
It came in waves, from mid-afternoon until late evening, twenty- or thirty-minute intervals of fastly-coming-down hail, with only rain in between.
It was as dark as midnight at 2:30 p.m., but as the cats were all accounted for, all safely indoors, I just sat back to watch. Anyone who’s ever seen a Sandhills thunderstorm, even a little itty-bitty one with the energy of only a few million Hiroshimas, of course doesn’t subscribe to this man-made “climate change†bullshit.
I suppose if one lives in a big city surrounded by all these man-made things, one might get the perception that that’s the way the world is, man controlling the whole thing. But out on the prairies, out on the plains, where one can see things more clearly, man ain’t nothing, compared with the forces of nature.
Solid walls of rolling clouds, reaching from the ground clear up into eternity, greenish-purple, greenish-black, purplish-black. For hours, rolling, swirling, tumbling.
Because I can’t hear, storms don’t hold nearly the terror for me that they might hold for hearing people, and so I spent much of the time either on the front porch watching the hail, or on the back porch watching the onrushing walls of clouds.
I wasn’t in any peril, as the cats all slumbered peacefully. If there’d been something extraordinary coming my way--such as a tornado, I guess--I’m sure the cats would’ve been doing something else. But as it was, they just slept away.
The most unnerving thing for me, personally, was the lack of information; how big was this thing, and how long was it going to last? The electricity never went out, but the internet, whose antenna is aimed at the top of the water-tower in town, did. No television, no radio, and even if those were around, because I can’t hear, well…..
The internet, my sole source of information, going out, was a bitch. It worked only intermittently until about suppertime, and then went blank. It was up again Wednesday morning, but not wholly; even now, in the middle of the night, early Thursday morning, it still flickers on and off.
So I had no idea. All I could do was sit, wait, and watch.
I have internet that’s conveyed by antenna; it was “sold†to me nine years ago because one was allowed unlimited time, as compared with telephonic internet. But in times of bad weather, it goes down. Dial-up, which I had in Lincoln, Omaha, and out here for ten years,
never went out.
So I’m considering something, although I dunno if it’s possible; having both this antenna service and dial-up on one single computer. Reliability’s more important to me than speed, and it’s not like I watch movies or listen to music on the computer anyway.
This was a storm for the record-books, but I think I would’ve felt better during it all, if I had some sort of idea what the Hell was going on.
