Back when I was a kid we had nothing like modern weather radar systems to keep us informed about storms and heavy weather. As I recall, there was some trick involving tuning the TV (antenna, of course, no cable back then) to an unused channel; exactly how this was supposed to warn us of tornadoes wasn’t ever clearly understood, at least not by me at the ripe age of somewhere between 6 and 8 years old.
But today … there’s some fairly serious tornado action southwest of us, and besides the local TV news providing very good coverage, I’ve been watching along on the computer.
Here’s what the weather radar looked like a few minutes ago. We’re the pink dot a bit to the right of the current storm action (shown in red and orange) down in Great Bend. We’ll likely not see any real severe weather here tonight; no complaints about that!
::
Update: Minutes after posting comes word that the town of Greensburg has suffered extremely heavy damage; here’s a thumbnail of the tornado that caused the extensive damage. According to the National Weather Service, Greensburg suffered a direct hit from the tornado, which has been reported as being almost a mile wide! Greensburg is about 120 miles southwest of Lindsborg.
Click to see a larger version.