Friday, April 14, 2006

NASA Can't Fool Me

Yes folks, the moon landings were faked. Don't believe me? Just click the link. You will be convinced for sure this time.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Cadbury Cake!
















Ok, so I know I haven't updated my blog in a long time. A few bits of news, I will be going to Chicago next thursday to check out apartments, spent a lot of time this week apartment "hunting" (with a Dick Cheney stamped and approved shotgun) online. Its tough to find something within my budget.

Wait, did I say multiple bits of news? Hmmm, I did something for the first time the other night. You know you're getting old ;-) when you no longer get a girl's phone number, but rather her facebook name (and AIM name).

So why the picture that I included you ask? Because it is from a hysterical website =) Check it out

http://shmivejournal.livejournal.com/125746.html

Enjoy, I certainly did =)

Peace out y'all

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Final update

Sorry about the lateness of the update. I worked a lot the last two days and have been busy doing stuff that needs to be done. Sunday was a pretty wild day, some of what happened that day...

- There were 68 tornado reports for that day
- 20 tornados were reported in Central Illinois, including one near assembly hall
- The death toll is at 26, with most of them in western Tennessee, which got smacked really hard.

Here's some photos from the National Weather Service

































































The damage pictures are too intense to choose just one. The photo of the water tower just shows the awesome strength of nature. Click the link above to get a full glimpse of just what these storms did to these communities, it was pretty bad.

As for where I was that day, I was out with Dave intending to spot the storms, but things got out of hand really quickly. We left Urbana right around when the warm front had passed, and we could feel how muggy the air was and how the wind had shifted direction from before. Our plan was to drive out Decatur, meet Andrew and Mike and meet the storms there. By the way, driving out to Decatur you get to smell the wonderful smell of the ADM plant. As Dave put it, he thought it smelled like buiscits and gravy, while I imagined it being the smell of a single piece of chicken in a deep frier for eight hours straight. Anyways, as we approach Decatur the clouds ahead of us (we're heading west, storms are heading north east aligned NW to SE) were getting darker and more intense.

We pull off interstate 72 and go north to get out of town when we hear a noise. I remember exactly what I said to Dave after he asks, "Do you hear that?" ... "Is somebody blaring their horn at us?"... at which point he rolls down his window and we hear the tornado sirens screaming at the top of their lungs. We look west and there is a huge mass of black cloud with very visible rotation bearing down on Decatur, and we're stuck at a red light. Meanwhile, on the spotter network and weather radio, reports are coming through of a large and dangerous tornado tracking in to right around where we were. Thinking about it now, we should have just said "Fuck it, we're finding shelter", but we decided to jet east as fast as we could. Dave's got the steering wheel, using his cell phone, and monitoring the radios. I'm navigating the country roads and looking at the sky while steering away from any rotating clouds.

We're speeding as fast as we can east, tornado warnings are popping up north and south of us, at our location, the radios are full of chatter. Its pouring like crazy, we definitely got caught in an inflow jet a couple of times which had us worried. At this point we talked to Roger on the phone and told him it was probably a good idea to shut down the ice rink (which was good considering how hard the storms hit Chambana).

We turned north on a country road in Piatt county to continue our trek back to safety and there was a huge tree that had fallen and blocked the road. Dave tried to off road it around the tree but the car wouldn't make it, so we had to back track. As we're finding another route out of there, we run into a smaller tree that had fallen and blocked our route, but this one we were able to get around. By this point the storms had overtaken us, so we got back on the highway and raced back to Champaign.

On our way back we were hearing reports of a tornado near Sadorus, near Homer, and near Southwest Champaign. Sadorus and Champaign lost power right around when each tornado was reported, so we were worried. Another tornado was spotted in Urbana (later confirmed) but did no damage. Parts of the city lost power for up to 13 hours, so it was a pretty bad mess. As we drove back into the city, there was damage ranging from downed power lines, trees, signs, and construction. At one point even, a spotter reported that a massive bolt of lightning (that we had also seen) struck and ignited a tree. Great, just another thing to add to the mess...

Finally, after the worst of it passes, we get back to Dave's house to find that the tree in their front yard fallen on his dad's truck and totally wrecked it. Reports were coming in of more storms developing west of Springfield, but they were just isolated storms and not severe.

What a night, I was pretty scared when we were stuck in Decatur as the sirens went off. Jetting out of there with the lightning and storms all around us was pretty frightening as well. Made me feel very insignificant seeing nature in all its fury around us like that. Usually we have some semblance of control when we are out there, with the ability to position ourselves well and navigate how we want to. But this just happened so fast, the storms overtook us so quickly, and we had no control; we were nature's bitch. I'm not usually afraid of storms, but this was totally different.

I'm glad that nobody got seriously hurt with these storms in the Central Illinois area, however it was a nightmare in Tennessee. Everybody was talking about it the next morning, people were pretty scared in the Chambana area as well.

Good times..... damn....

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Nasty, nasty weather

Really nasty weather outbreak across the midwest today and overnight. Four dead confirmed so far across Missouri, Illinois, and Tennessee, which is getting hit really hard right now. Dave and I were out tonight and had a rough time. I'll post more about it tomorrow.

[update] Associated Press reports at least eight dead in Tennessee alone.
[update II] Death toll is up to fourteen, mostly in Tennessee =(