this beast was just a WALL of darkness.  holy cow.  I took some pics and vids on cellphone I'll see if I can get them up.  First it was sunny, then there was tht ominous 'why is it so quiet' and then this WALL of dark came.  it was magnificent.

serious independence day effects.

I was driving between christiansburg and blacksburg and as i was going towards tech, i saw it in the distance and thought "hmm, that looks bad" all of a sudden there were like 40-50 mph gusts and the truck was being buffeted. i felt like a rodeo clown in  abarrel. phew, monster storm, and continuing nastiness. well, i guess we're due for some storms.

Here's two pics of the contrast of daytime, nice weather, birdies whistling, kids playing in street etc.  AND THEN DOOOOOOOOM organ music, bats fly from trees, the swings in the empty playground are creaking, squirrels go underground, etc....

(I've got WICKED video if someone tells me how to host them...)

these are pics from rockville - I was getting some steak before class at koshermart.

Here's some REAL choppy video, about 2/3 way through, you can see the sunny/dark as death distinction.  


http://video.tinypic.com/player.php?v=sy60e1

Same way down here, last night was pretty creepy

i seen it before when i would drive back and forth between here and ohio--don't ask why.  i was asleep all afternoon/evening yesterday cause i am sick.  and yeah it is kinda creepy.

Me and fiend live about 1/4 mile apart. I took this from my front porch last night.

http://home.comcast.net/~sp3nc3/DSC01865.JPG

I went out to take a look and man that storm came in quick!

1st shot (ballston looking south)



2nd shot  about 30-50 sec's later

I wish I had taken pics. You should have seen the snow out here. It was a complete white out.

Nice pics btw.

Bomber

yeah I saw the same thing yesterday morning walking to synogogue.  Your (ok I guess I can call it 'our') storms come in DAMN quick here....  Still not quite used to the weather patterns.  In NY it's predicatble, it always goes one way, comes from one direction, shore gets more snow than city, etc.  Here, its a toss up every time with every weather pattern possible....

Here is a short video clip of lightning striking our broadcast tower.

I out ran that storm for about 30 minutes on my commute home, basically riding JUST ahead of the rain, but got buffetted by the wind... it occured to me that if I were walking home, say in post SHTF and a storm like that blew in, I'd be soaked even in a poncho. It eventually caught me and I had to slow way down to stay on the road.... Basically on foot, you see a monster like that coming and you have to pitch a tent, gather fire wood and tie everything down asap... and prepare to be miserable.

Quoted: I out ran that storm for about 30 minutes on my commute home, basically riding JUST ahead of the rain, but got buffetted by the wind... it occured to me that if I were walking home, say in post SHTF and a storm like that blew in, I'd be soaked even in a poncho. It eventually caught me and I had to slow way down to stay on the road.... Basically on foot, you see a monster like that coming and you have to pitch a tent, gather fire wood and tie everything down asap... and prepare to be miserable.

IT really was (forrest gump) sideways rain, upside down rain and big ol fat rain all at once.  VERY impressive.  

I just got back (Saturday evening) from TN. It was really bad there.  First night, tornadoes were everywhere.  (I was in Camden, for training). We went out to eat and tried to make a quick stop at the town's 24hr Walmart. We rolled-up and there was a man out front w/ a wx radio. He told us the store was closed. We protested: "hey, aint this a 24hr Walmart?" His reply was: "Yeah, but there is a tornado comin', so we closed the store..."

We decided to continue on to get food (we had been on the road all day and were really hungry). We go down the road a piece and then all of a sudden, the town's Emergency Sirens start sounding. We hurredly scrambled to find a news station on the car radio (on a Sunday night in rural TN, this is no easy feat).  We know what county we were in, but, we did not know the adjacent county names. The GPS did not have that info either. We rolled up to a Pizza Hut and it was just starting to rain. We entered the store and asked if it was still open, we were told yes it was. I then asked if they had a TV or radio. They said no. I asked if they knew about the wx in the area. They said that if something bad were on it's way, a family member of one of the employee's would call on the phone. They went on to say that they had a designated safe area in-case of a storm.

We decided to dine....about 10 minutes into our stay, the wind and lightning activity really picked-up and the the rain began to come down heavily. A moment or two later, the hail began. It was first the pea-sized stuff and then quickly went to golf ball-sized. After about a minute or two, there was larger (tennis ball sized) hail mixed in with the smaller hail. At this point, I got up from the table and moved away from the windows. My buddy (he lives in NH) starts moving closer to the windows. I am asking him what is up with that! He said that it never storms like this in NH, so he wanted to get a good look at it.

After about 10 minutes, everything dies down and we continue to eat. Later, we leave and drive thru town. A lot of the trees that had leaves on them were stripped. Some cars had broken/cracked windows.

We later find out that a F0/F1tornado passed a few miles away from where we were. That night, TN had many people killed.

That bad thing was that it happened again the following Friday. As we watched the news early that morning, some of the county school systems were scheduling early dismissal for that afternoon in anticipation of the bad wx. Sure enough, that afternoon, tornadic supercells rolled thru. Our last excercise on the range was done not too long before a bad cell came thru.