Sky go boom

On September 7, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn life6 Comments

Nothing too terrifying at the moment, but the FutureTrack has that bleb in the corner moving northeast and toward us, and after about 6:45 has us under red or orange for most of the evening. So I’m tossing up a quick note now because if I don’t the power is guaranteed to go out.

WordPress is showing signs of “improving” their editor again, too, so not only will the power go out but this is not going to look right somehow. I’m also psyched about that.

… and, 20 minutes of staring at the screen later, apparently not much happened today. I continue to be pleased with how the school year is going, so it’s absolutely time to rearrange everything again and see if I can wreck it all.

More later. I can’t tell if that’s a tornado siren going off or if someone is using a leaf blower during a rainstorm for some reason, and I feel like I ought to go find out.

Yikes

On June 24, 2019 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

Midwesterners are occasionally not very smart people.

I was starting to get ready to put the boy to bed last night when suddenly the civil defense alarms started going off. Normally the alarms don’t happen until after the National Weather Service has already kicked out some watches and warnings, and I hadn’t seen anything, so I posted a quick message to Facebook asking if anybody knew anything and we went about our business. It took maybe another 10 minutes for my phone to start blowing up, and even when it did, it was all “radar indicates rotation” type of stuff and no actual someone sees a tornado types of warnings. I feel like now that they’re doing “radar indicates rotation” as a threat level, we need a new word for that. Tornado warning always meant someone has actually seen a funnel cloud to me and I don’t know how seriously to treat your radar tornadoes.

Anyway, we didn’t go hide in the bathtub, and we didn’t go into the basement. I’ve been living in tornado-prone areas for 3/4 of my life and I can count the number of times I’ve actually taken shelter during tornado warnings on one hand. I have never in all that time seen one with my own eyes, and the last time we were having tornado warnings I was literally outside taking video on my phone because the clouds were cool.

I am not alone in this, mind you. This is a Midwestern thing. We are used to this shit– if anything, too used to this shit. By the time the warnings were really starting to show up, it was barely even raining at my house any longer, so we didn’t go anywhere.

So, uh, that building in that picture up there is maybe a five-minute drive from my house. It used to be a day care– not my son’s day care, but we’ve tried to get him in there a couple of times because it’s more convenient to where we live than anywhere else we’ve installed him. And it’s, uh, gone now, because tornado. Luckily said tornado was at 8:30 on a Sunday night so the building was deserted.

Maybe next time we’ll go hang out in the basement for five minutes.

Snowpocalypse 2016, round 2

On February 25, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography5 Comments

I recognize that I basically post the same four pictures every time we get a blizzard around here. They’re still fun so I’m gonna keep doing it. 🙂

Note how the fence is basically a vertical wall of snow at this point.

Snowpocalypse 2016

On February 25, 2016February 25, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn PhotographyLeave a comment

2nd snow day in a row, this one for basically every school in northern Indiana but one at the moment, and no one in my family attends that one stalwart school.

This is the lilac bush next to my back door, taken from inside the house, because the bush is now blocking the door:

More later; I’m going to give the neighborhood half an hour to wake up and then go clear the driveway again, because there’s a berm at the foot of the driveway and my wife still has to go to work.

In which I shill

On February 19, 2015February 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn ReviewsLeave a comment

In accordance with prophecy, it’s -20 degrees outside and I’m at home. I have had one opportunity for a five-day work week in 2015, and during that week I was sick for two days. Tomorrow morning it is expected to be colder, and while there are going to be less issues with precipitation (we’re also getting lots of blowing lake-effect snow, which is nasty) I think colder than twenty below means I’m likely at day one of a four-day weekend right now. Generally, twenty below is regarded as the magic number. I think it’ll be a few days before I’m back at work.

Allow me to discuss a website and a mobile app for a moment. I don’t know what you use for your weather forecasts, but you should be going to Weather Underground.

(I note that, despite what I just said, the temp for tomorrow morning– shown by the vertical line– is at -17 and not -20. Nonetheless.)

The critical times for closing school are 6:00 in the morning and 3:00 in the afternoon. For those of us who care about such things, knowing what the high and low are going to be during the day is actually not terribly relevant, especially since meteorologists don’t know what the words “high” and “low” actually mean. Elsewhere on this page the low temp for today is listed as -6, a temperature that appears nowhere on the actual forecast for today on the same damn page, but instead happens tomorrow morning.

Note: the “high temperature” for a given day is the warmest it is at any point during that day. Similarly, the “low temperature” for a given day is the coldest it is at any point during that day. If meteorologists are using any other definitions for “high” and “low,” they are being stupid and should stop. Come up with your own words. “High” and “low” have seven goddamn letters between the two of them and we know what they mean. Stop being dumb. I don’t care what good reasons you think you have for defining those words wrong; you’re being dumb and you should stop. Call your dumb things something else. “High” and “low” belong to people who speak English.

Anyway. That’s actually a separate rant. Back to what I was saying: The important times are 6 AM and 3 PM, because those are bus times, with 6 AM being considerably more important than 3 PM because kids are walking to school and/or standing outside waiting for their buses. Twenty below goddamn zero is too bloody cold for a little kid to stand outside and wait for the bus even before you get to the part where a lot of them don’t have anything between them and the cold other than a thin hoodie. Add crappy precipitation that slows the buses down (and sometimes knocks them off the road or keeps them from starting in the first place) and it becomes massively irresponsible on the part of the adults.

Which is why I love the hell out of this graph. It’s got all the usual sources of error built into it that any weather forecasting model does, of course, but it gives me everything I could possibly need to figure out what a day’s going to be like at a glance. I have never seen any weather site other than Weather Underground that presents data this cleanly or this usefully– and, looking at it, I’m a little concerned about Tuesday and Friday next week, too.

(Note, by the way, the high and low for next Tuesday. A low of 13 degrees when it gets down to -1 during that day? No. That’s not what that word means. The low is -1.)

Anyway. Not only is the site awesome, but they have an app now too, and that includes not only the ability to see that graph but lots of fun radar stuff too. I strongly recommend you check them out.

And now to figure out what I’m doing with myself today.

Uh-oh.

On January 31, 2015January 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized9 Comments

Go ahead, count ’em. That there storm system is four states wide, and heading more or less directly toward me. Like, due east. The whole damn thing’s gonna pass over us, and it’ll pick up steam when it goes over the lake.

Tomorrow’s gonna be fun. I don’t think this is going to eat Monday yet, though, because even if, as predicted, it snows for 24 hours straight, the plows ought to have time to keep the roads clear. I still bet I have to blow off the driveway three times tomorrow.

Whee!

Woohoo 2!

On January 7, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching5 Comments

School’s been cancelled tomorrow, because it’s supposed to be like ten below zero at 6:00 tomorrow morning, meaning that I can either stay home and work on the book (the responsible choice) or stay home and play video games (the slightly more awesome choice.) At some point I will probably have to blow off the driveway in astonishingly cold weather, which I could be happier about, but… yeah. No school! Whee!

I’ll try and post something actually interesting later tonight.

On how NOT to talk to parents

On November 13, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

So it snowed today.

It snowed rather a lot, and rather unexpectedly as well. I had no idea that it was snowing until I opened my garage door. It’s a bit of a mystery how I managed to not look through any of the three windows in my bedroom, but I did it. I am normally able to leave the house around 7:00 AM and arrive at work with a cup of McDonald’s coffee in my hand at around 7:25. I wanted to be in by 7:15 today, so I left ten minutes early, at about 6:50. It took 54 minutes to get to work. Highways were shut down, cars were spinning off the road everywhere, and, as it turns out, there were a number of minor school bus accidents as well.

Keep in mind: everyone who lives here drives in snow for half the damn year. Or at least what feels like half the damn year. It was slick as hell outside; even taking the approach to my school very carefully I still managed to miss the damn parking lot, and even at lunchtime my anti-lock brakes kicked in on the very first turn out of the lot. It was shitty outside today, people.

Anyway. Back to those minor school bus accidents. The district made the decision very early in the day to cancel all after-school activities and all field trips (I don’t know that there actually were any, mind you) and other things requiring transportation during the day as well except for that which was absolutely necessary to get kids to and from school. So they decided to do an all-call to every parent in the corporation, because, well, that kind of decision is going to affect a lot of kids.

Important: I have not heard the all-call, but I’ve seen the carnagey aftermath, so it’s possible that I’m slightly misrepresenting this? But apparently the all-call included, in addition to the cancellation information, the fact that there had been “several” minor bus accidents in the morning but– and this was apparently delivered with a cheery tone of voice, which given the person who I know sent it, doesn’t surprise me– there were “no serious injuries.”

Guess which words every fucking parent who got the call heard? “Bus accident” and “injuries.” The goddamned phones were ringing off the hook all day. In addition to the usual complement of assholes who don’t answer the phone then don’t listen to their voicemail and just call the number back without knowing who it is they’re calling– those are always fun– we got a number of irate phone calls from parents who were mad because we hadn’t called them to let them know that their kids were in a bus accident.

Because, see, they weren’t.

One parent was even angry that we hadn’t notified her that her child had been injured in a bus accident, and wanted to know what hospital she was at. If her child doesn’t pass ISTEP, the school is blamed, people.

Not having an “I love my job” day right now, guys.