Storms like I've never seen.
Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 9:29 am
... or heard, to be more precise. A major system rolled through last night, one that's spawned several tornadoes out in the Dakotas, and apparently did some major straight-line wind damage in Minnesota.
No such cyclonic events happened in Rochester to my knowledge... but man, I heard something last night that left me quaking in bed around 3 AM.
It was very strange--a single flash of lightning, and then a crescendo of thunder that started off pitifully weak, but over the course of what seemed to be about fifteen to thirty seconds, built up so loud that it was setting up harmonics in every part of the house. This was accompanied by either a massive increase in wind or rain--a higher frequency rumble that sounded almost, but not quite, like a tornado's signature fright-train rumble.
I counted six of these. The delay between the light and the sound was near non-existent, so they were practically right on top of us.
Now the screwball thing is, I've had lightning strike within ten-twenty meters of me on a couple of occaisions. None of those were rumbles that built up, but rather hair-flattening blast waves as if someone had set off a stick of dynamite. I've also had such encounters with similar light/sound delays as the ones last night, and those were also very short. This build-up style is entirely new to me.
It left me positively spooked. And yet, checking the neighborhood and the house this morning, I can find no real damage to the area. I was expecting at the least cracked windows in the house, because the harmonics were so unbelievably powerful--I could hear the doors shaking and rattling locksets against strikeplates, not to mention our I-beam supported floor doing something similar. And the build-up was incredibly smooth, as if one were carefully cranking the volume on a stereo from zero to ten over a period of time.
I'm at a total loss on this one. I've been in, sheltered from, and driven through countless powerful storms (ahhh, the joys of Tornado Alley!), and I've never encountered anything that behaved like this.
No such cyclonic events happened in Rochester to my knowledge... but man, I heard something last night that left me quaking in bed around 3 AM.
It was very strange--a single flash of lightning, and then a crescendo of thunder that started off pitifully weak, but over the course of what seemed to be about fifteen to thirty seconds, built up so loud that it was setting up harmonics in every part of the house. This was accompanied by either a massive increase in wind or rain--a higher frequency rumble that sounded almost, but not quite, like a tornado's signature fright-train rumble.
I counted six of these. The delay between the light and the sound was near non-existent, so they were practically right on top of us.
Now the screwball thing is, I've had lightning strike within ten-twenty meters of me on a couple of occaisions. None of those were rumbles that built up, but rather hair-flattening blast waves as if someone had set off a stick of dynamite. I've also had such encounters with similar light/sound delays as the ones last night, and those were also very short. This build-up style is entirely new to me.
It left me positively spooked. And yet, checking the neighborhood and the house this morning, I can find no real damage to the area. I was expecting at the least cracked windows in the house, because the harmonics were so unbelievably powerful--I could hear the doors shaking and rattling locksets against strikeplates, not to mention our I-beam supported floor doing something similar. And the build-up was incredibly smooth, as if one were carefully cranking the volume on a stereo from zero to ten over a period of time.
I'm at a total loss on this one. I've been in, sheltered from, and driven through countless powerful storms (ahhh, the joys of Tornado Alley!), and I've never encountered anything that behaved like this.
The storms up here were something wicked. I didn't get anything in North Minneapolis, but a few miles further north of me got absolutley pounded by rain and thunder and lightning. And it was actually an F2 Tornado that went through Rogers AB, it was on the ground for about 8 miles. We don't get many Tornadoes through here, usually they're off in a corn field somewhere, but we've had a few damage cities this year, very strange.