Derecho Isn't Just a City in Texas
I woke up late and had a fire department meeting in an hour, and it was a horrible day for a drive, so we went for a drive.
In our defense, it was a time-sensitive errand ... and we didn't know it would be a bad day for a drive. As I dragged myself out of bed Emily told me about a line of thunderstorms to the west, but we were headed east. Surely we could get things done and be back before it hit.
We didn't know it was a derecho, which is meteorological term meaning "big honking storm like a hurricane except in the middle of the country", which wouldn't have fit as easily in a headline. We also didn't take into consideration that the system was moving at 60 mph. By the time we got back it was, as the old timers say, all over but the shouting.
Just after we turned back I crested a hill on a country road and almost ran down a group of wild turkeys. Um, flock. Herd? Wait, let me look it up ...
Huh. Rafter. A group of turkeys is called a rafter. Who'da thunk it? Anyway, that was my first clue that this wouldn't be an ordinary trip.
Your rafter may vary.
There would be a lot of shouting. And wind. And those big huge drops of rain that look like there's a bucket full in each drop, and yeah, a little hail mixed in with that. We hit some of that, then about five miles out of town Emily told me the clouds were rotating, which I could believed because by then the western third of Noble County was under a tornado warning. (We were under a thunderstorm warning, which in retrospect seems underwhelming. It occurs to me there should be a derecho warning, or possibly they could call it a land hurricane, which sounds cooler.)
We pulled over at a good spot to watch. (In other words, safe.) I got out to see, yes indeed, there was a small rotating wall cloud going over our heads. I never thought to get some video, which is odd, because I'm usually all about grabbing the camera; but I stayed standing outside the car long enough to see it wasn't just a random cross wind--it was, indeed, rotating. I didn't see a funnel, and so far as I know all the damage around Noble County came from straight line winds ... which did just fine by themselves, thank you.
Emily, who's much smarter than me, and the dog, who's also no dummy, had stayed in the car. So I was the only one who got clobbered when another wall of those bucket-sized raindrops reached us.
We tried to drive on, but have you ever tried to drive while inside an automatic car wash?
You have? What the heck's the matter with you?!?
So we didn't drive, for a while, having found another place to get completely off the roadway. Eventually we went on, once all the foliage around us was no longer leaning at a 90 degree angle. Or 75 degree. Or ... oh, who am I fooling? I hated math. They were blowing sideways, okay?
Now, people can sometimes cause problems by trying to do the right thing. As we inched down the highway, an oncoming car flashed its high beams to get out attention. It was probably the driver who did it, not the car, but never mind.
They were trying to warn me, but it had the opposite effect, because I was looking at that passing car when Emily said "TREE!"
My wife doesn't yell about trees unless they suddenly appear in front of us, in the twilight haze of sideways rain. It had blocked about half of State Road 8, and it wasn't something I was going to move, so I called the Sheriff Department business number.
It was busy.
Different storm, same action.
You gotta understand, that just doesn't happen often. My first impulse was just to leave them alone, but the tree was across a state highway, after all. I got through by portable radio, and after we determined we'd do more harm than good if we stayed where we were, we headed back toward Albion.
That's when we came across a tree branch, halfway across the road from the other side, but this one was something we thought we could do something about. It was obviously just a large, dead branch, so we hopped out, dodging cats and dogs (still raining, you see), ran over to it, and realized it was way bigger than we'd thought from inside the dry car, where the dog was laughing at us.
Okay, it was a tree.
But it was a dead tree, so by hauling on it together, we were able to break the worst of it off. then we threw the larger broken branches off the roadway, and then we got the heck out of dodge, because dodge was a highway and visibility wasn't exactly 100%. Especially since the pavement was starting to flood, and who knew which way other drivers were looking?
Yeah, I missed the fire meeting.
But we made it home safely, and we had dry clothes, and even electricity, which is more than a lot of other people could stay. The moral of the story is, I suppose, the same as it's been all year:
Stay home.
(Just the same, after we were safely home I looked at Emily and said, "But now that it's over, it was kinda fun, wasn't it?" She agreed. The dog was a dissenting vote. And this attitude is how people get into trouble.)
I suppose I should advertise my novel Storm Chaser here, but the weather was a windbag enough for all of us.
http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
Curious, we just had a really hefty thunderstorm here just when you posted this.
It really bucketed water down for at least half an hour, like in a tropical downpour. Not very often that we see that here.
To round things off, a alarm went of in the hospital over the road, and a bunch of fire engines showed up 2 minutes later. The guys rushed into the building, and 5 minutes later came strolling out again and drove off. That happens fairly often btw., that there is a false alarm, I mean. It a pretty large building, so they don't wait until a fire is confirmed, they rely on the alarm systems. Which seems to be a bit temperamental sometimes.
At least all that had also a good side: it has cooled down a bit. It was really awfully hot lately. 36°, sometimes 38°C, which is 98F or so in your money. Good thing I don't have to work anymore, that really sucks in such heat.
Btw., rafter? Really? I have never seen turkeys rafting. Not voluntarily, anyway. :)
Well, in all fairness, I've never seen wild turkeys doing much of anything, other than getting in front of cars and scaring the crap out of me when I'm on hiking trails. (Those suckers look huge crashing out of the underbrush.)
Our theory of automatic fire alarms is that we need to get everyone on the road right away in case it's the real thing ... but it usually isn't, and it can really be hard to tune those things so they don't go off too often. So you have the problem of alarm fatigue if you go every time, but you have REAL problems if you don't go at all, and it's that one time in a hundred. It's a tough balancing act.
Yes, it can lead to the typical "cry wolf" effect. We had that in the army camp, too. They had a sophisticated fire alarm system there in every block, that would sound sirens and automated announcements and all. Everybody was supposed to leave the building and then gather at a designated point outside at a safe distance.
But the problem was, this alarm went off like twice a week (on occassion even twice a day), and they couldn't get this problem sorted out somehow. So after a while people just ignored the alarms and carried on working. Or drinking their teas. Thank God never any real fire broke out.
Yeah, that's exactly the problem. I've been involved with two alarms that turned out to be real fires, and that should be enough to keep anyone on their toes, but getting those a lot can be mind numbing.
Amazingly, I cannot remember that there was ever any serious fire in the camps here in town, during the 34 years I worked there. Well, there was a bomb that went off in a accomodation block - but that doesn't need much of a fire alarm system, believe me. You're not gonna miss noticing when that happens...
And a few times guys in the workshops smoked a car by welding on it. But thats also pretty obvious and they had extinguishers ready to use quickly enough.
The only time I've seen a house really messed up was a house of a officer's family. They all went on vacation back in England over the christmas break, like 3 or 4 weeks. When they left, they thought it would be a good idea to turn the electricity off at the fuse box, to prevent a fire by malfunctioning electrics.
What they didn't think off was, that this would also turn of the heating system. Over christmas there was a severe cold spell, like -15°C for 2 weeks - and that made all the water pipes in the house burst from freezing. The whole place was totally soaked and frozen up, you could do ice skating in the living room. The family got relocated - after a severe telling off - and it took month to make the house useable again.
But the dodgy fire alarm system in the camp blocks was really annoying. And I bet it had cost a fortune as well. It wasn't just smoke alarms or stuff like that. There was lots of sensors everywhere, connected to a steel cabinet at the entrance of each block, that was full of signal lights and buttons and stuff. And those block alarms were all linked to a central alarm panel in the guard room, so they can see where the fire is, direct the fire brigade and emergency service ect.
But such complex systens can be funny. Another such system was the internal telephone sytem. When the camps were built, which was still before WW2 in the mid 1930s by the Germans, there was probably one phone in each block, and may be a few more in the headquarter block. And after the war, when the Brits moved in, they started adding more and more phones and phone lines, over the period of 60 years. At the end, there was a phone in every room, even in the basements. And in office rooms they had 6 or 8 phones in a room even.
And there was only one guy from the German Telekom who really understood how this all worked. Everybody knew him, because he had been there so often over such a long time. If he wasn't available, they were screwed. At times I saw some young guys from Telekom, desperatly running around measuring lines in switch boxes here and there, unable to figure out how this all works.
I somehow have the suspicion, the real reason behind the withdraw of the British army back to the UK was, that this Telekom guy had retired. :)
Ah, the complicated old system and the invaluable IT guy! The same in every country.
Yeah, its a bit like in the old days, when a old craftsman passes his knowledge on to the next generation. But if this knowledge is not passed on...
Speaking of passing it on, I know it's not quite the same, but I loaned my youngest daughter several of my books on writing the other day. Another novelist in the family? I'm so proud! And worried about her financial future, but mostly proud.