A night of near misses - and one that didn't

I found myself watching an episode of "Storm Chasers" on the Discovery Channel tonight. The series follows groups of storm chasers through spring in Tornado Alley...some trying to gather scientific data that will help researchers and meteorologists better understand tornadoes and the conditions that create them......and some just trying to capture video and photos that will draw large numbers of hits to their Web sites.

This particular episode struck close to home, because it was in late May in Kansas last year. The Friday before Memorial Day, when tornadoes touched down awfully close to Quinter - the small town next to I-70 in northwest Kansas where my oldest brother, Don, lives. I remember blogging about those tornadoes - one of which hovered in the sky and passed over I-70 and Quinter before finally touching down north of town. Talk about a close call....

Later that night, a tornado touched down in Kiowa County and seemed headed right for Greensburg...which had been decimated by an F5 tornado just the year before. Thankfully, it fell apart prior to reaching Greensburg.

Hearing the tornado sirens go off in the wrecked town that Greensburg largely remained was particularly chilling. As threatening as the clouds appeared, the poor souls of Greensburg had to be shaken to the core as those sirens blared, given what they had been through the previous May.

I was glad to see the researchers check out farm damage north of Quinter the next morning, to remind viewers of what tornadoes can do. There was something important missing from the episode, however: perhaps 50 miles east of Greensburg, on that stormy Friday night, a couple from Colorado was struck and killed by a tornado as they drove east toward Wichita. Driving through a storm in the dark, they probably never knew what hit them.

It would have been wise to mention the fatalities, to remind viewers what can happen when tornadoes strike.

A total headache

Well, as I suspected, that hail storm last Wednesday totaled my Mercury Sable. An All-State agent confirmed that for me.


Now I wait to hear from someone else what they'll pay me for my 10-year-old car. I may end up being able to buy a cup of coffee with that check.


But here's the thing: except for the cracked windshield, the car still runs and rides well...so I'm sorely tempted to keep it and drive it for a while, even though it looks like somebody attacked it with a ballpeen hammer.


Given the doldrums of the current economy and the cutbacks so many businesses have had to make - including newspapers - I'm reluctant to dole out a bunch of money for a new set of wheels.

I guess that's the farm boy in me: if it still works well, why toss it aside? Let's hope I get a lot more miles out of that Sable, dents and all.

The song of the cicadas

I went for a walk tonight, chased to the dying moments of sunlight by the day's unyielding heat. As I strolled through the residential streets surrounding my apartment complex, I heard the song of the cicadas.

As a child, I always associated that sound with the arrival of August - which, with school days just around the corner, meant the departure of summer.

Oh, not the summer's heat, but the 'freedom' of the season. Summer meant no classes, no long bus rides, no homework or interminable list of math equations to tackle.

Not that we ever had the freedom to while away those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer that I heard about in song, and from the stories of those who grew up in the city. On the farm there were always chores to do, and the older we got the more work there was to be done.

But summer still meant the lunch break could be two hours if the heat was especially intense, and if we needed 10 minutes to get a drink of water and catch our breath, we could do that.

Summer also meant you would likely be out in the field or the barn or the yard in a place where you could watch the traffic flash by on the state highway or the horses frolic in the pasture or birds flittering about in the trees - all sights denied you when you were locked away in a classroom somewhere.

I guess that's why the sound of cicadas always filled me with a sense of sadness as a youth, coming as they typically did so late in a child's summer. And that old melancholy flashed tonight when I heard them again - even though we haven't even reached the midpoint of July yet.

So sing a song of summer, cicadas. You don't have to mean "farewell."

How hot is it?

It's so hot that as I stood in the Best Buy parking lot this afternoon I felt like a sausage being cooked on a massive Teflon frying pan.

It's so hot I thought my tennis shoes would melt even as I stood there.

It's so hot that I could feel the heat radiating from me even as the AC in my apartment hummed and hummed and hummed.

I'm guessing Wichita hit 103 today...which would be the hottest day of the year here.

But you know what? It's July in Kansas. That means summer. And summer means some days are going to be mighty hot. I'd still take this over winter....any time.

A hail of a storm

Windows are shattered in the bedrooms. The screens have been shredded. So much hail had piled up on the balcony in a matter of minutes that it looked like it had snowed. The hail stones pounded the roof of my apartment building so intensely I had to shout to be heard on the phone.

And that wasn't even the worst of the storm that blew up in the atmosphere Wednesday night and savaged sections of Wichita. Hail the size of baseballs struck downtown and in neighborhoods around the city.

There's something poetic about baseball-sized hail falling at the baseball stadium...unless it was your vehicle that had its windows crushed by the onslaught.

My car took a pounding in its own right. My front windshield has a handful of cracks, which spent a steamy Thursday lengthening. I'm going to have to replace the windshield...and I may have to replace the car.

"The coldest beer in town"

How many times have I heard that phrase in beer commercials?

Don't they all have coolers? Don't they all keep the brewskis at about the same temperature? Come on.

When I hear a store advertise "the coldest beer in town," that sounds like, "the beer we offer sucks, so we'll brag about its temperature instead."

Tell me you have more varieties than any other store.....or more of our local favorites....or more shelves of good beer than anybody else.

But "the coldest beer in town"? Really? Why? Is it frozen? Does it come in bricks, not just 6-packs?

Chill.

Where's the cheese?

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you're still a rat."

- Lilly Tomlin