So today, I was at work. I wasn't really expecting severe weather today, but knew rain was going to be in the area. Even if it had gone severe, I definitely didn't expect it to come near me. The dining area was shut down due to an order to boil water after the water main broke yesterday, so I didn't have to interact with customers at all and just spent time cleaning.
After working maybe an hour, I got an alert message for the county to my west for a severe thunderstorm. Since I live right on the county line, I get messages for my county as well as over there. I looked out the windows and it getting kinda gray, but the clouds were too close for me to get an idea of their structure. About a half hour later, I got another message for a continuation of that warning. I had no access to radar so I just had to wait and see what happened.
Now comes the good part. While I was mopping in the glass enclosed dining area (quite a good vantage point with 270° of view), the storm came in very fast. The wind began things and was whipping trees around and twigs and leaves were swirling around in the air and over the highway. The clouds were moving very fast to the northeast. The clouds were a sickening grayish green (although I never got hail) and I could see the underside of much of the cloud structure due to lack of initial rain. I got quite a treat when the clouds passed over some trees and into my view (pardon the nauseous quality, only had my crappy phone):
Both of those lowerings in the clouds were rotating fairly quickly. The one on the right is a definite funnel cloud, but never touched the ground at least in my view. The lowering on the left was much larger but was not quite as low. It could possibly have been dual funnels though.
That was definitely the highlight of things, but other things happened as well. First off, the wind began blasting rain against the west side of the building causing water to go under the door. All we had were paper towels though, so the water flooded the entire door well as well as the entire right side of the dining room, which I had just gotten done sweeping, scrubbing, and mopping. Mfw
When I got off work, the first storm was gone but there was lightning to the north. I went to Dollar General (same area as Hardee's, where I work) to buy ear buds and an audio jack. A girl and a guy, probably both 20 or under in age, saw my Hardee's shirt and asked if I'd seen the fire on the other side of the highway.
What
Apparently, lightning had struck some trees maybe a couple hundred yards from Hardee's and started a fire and I never noticed. I showed them this picture that I took and they just stared in awe wondering how they never noticed it.
When I came out, I could see another storm heading in, only noticeable in the darkness due to lightning illuminating it. And I had to drive in that direction to get home. So basically, I was driving head-on towards another storm not knowing what lay inside due to being so dark. I drove fast and managed to get home right when the lightning was getting more numerous and thunder was audible. I'm home now and it's still storming hard now.
Hall of Fame:It's amazing how one day you're just at work like XR and then bad weather happens without you really knowing. He must've caught wind of the situation a bit late!
were you saving that joke for a rainy day?
