Monday Madness (001)

Here are some weather-related questions ... Thank you for playing and have an awesome week! =)

1. Where you live, what kind of weather (or weather-related tragedy) do you fear the most?

I live on top of a hill, and there are almost no trees of any size on our property. This is in the Upper Midwest. And being a flat-lander from the eat coast, I am not familiar with cloud formations or the weather patterns of this part of the country. So, the scariest weather is tornado or flat-line wind (tornadic-speed wind without the spin).

2. What kind of weather do you MOST enjoy?

Having said that, as long as I am inside, it is going north or south of us but is visible, and I am not out driving in it, I actually enjoy thunder storms. The lightening is amazing as it arcs across the expanse of sky and zaps the ground.

Otherwise, I also enjoy snow as long as I am not out in it or have to go out in it soon. The silence that seems to surround the falling of snow, or the muffling of sounds, is comfortable like a favorite old quilt to sleep under.

3. What kind of weather do you LEAST like to drive in?

Anything that makes it hard to see: rain, snow, sleet, or even the normal everyday weather of dusk!

4. What is the scariest weather-related experience you've had in your lifetime?

While I was a student at the University of Minnesota, I had to take classes during the summer to be able to graduate when I wanted to. So, I took a course in my major, studio ceramics, as a night class. It was during my first six months in Minnesota after moving from New Jersey. I'm used to fire sirens at noon as a daily system test because we still had volunteer fire companies that respond to the "fire whistles." Well, that night, July 1, the sirens went off around 8 PM -- meaning a tornado had been sighted within x-number of miles.

We were in the basement already so there was no where else to go. Then the rain started and well, we ended up with 8-10 inches of water on the floor of the studio (huge double room) where extension cords were under water. When the water first started coming in we ran around and unplugged all the cords we saw. Missed one. (The water would have been deeper but students up the ramp from us in the metal studio filled sandbags and blocked the doors to keep more water from running in.)

One very brave student waded over to the outlet and yanked out the cord.

There were reports of water geysering out of storm drains, cars in water up to their windows, cars floating away.

By the time I left the studio that night around 10:30, other than a puddle here and there, you wouldn't have known the storm had been so bad. There were some homes flooded by a flash flood in one of the Twin Cities' northern suburbs. And on July 3, the Twin Cities outer Metro area had FROST!

The guy I am now married to, lived along a street in residential St. Paul, where flat-line, during that storm, winds hit and took out most of the huge trees that had once lined the street a couple of blocks away. A huge limb landed on his car and crushed it.

5. Share a "weather picture" with us!