The Winds of Change - They Are A Bowin'

What a day!

As you may or may not know, I have a debilitating back condition that basically determines the steps of my life. I am so tired of it dominating every aspect of my daily life. Take today (actually yesterday since this is being written at 1:00am) for instance, I was hurting worse than I've hurt in a long time. I was not able to much more than lay in bed, stoned out of my mind on pain killers. Every move was punctuated by severe pain. When I am like this I am not the easiest person to be around even though I try my best not to be too big of a pain in the ass. I am not one who needs to be waited on hand and foot when I don't feel well, I would much rather be left alone and allowed to lick my wounds, as it were.

Well around dinner time the cause of my pain made itself visible in the form of a monstrous thunderstorm which was ushering in a strong cold front. We started hearing weather reports about rotation in the clouds and major hail hitting just to the west of Ft Worth. We turned on the TV and saw the radar images of a huge monster coming our way. We got out our handy radio scanner and tuned into the RAYCES weather net, these are the Ham Radio Operators who go out in bad weather to give reports of dangerous conditions. There was lots of chatter about wall clouds, funnels and large hail coming into Tarrant County. The sky was turning an eerie shade of green and then an awesome shade of burnt orange. Storm sirens were going off all around us, everywhere except Haltom City that is.

Tornado On The Ground In Aledo, just West of Ft Worth 4/17/2008

Finally, Haltom City activated their storm warning system and a hearty cheer went up from the Renfro clan, sitting under our large Mulberry tree in the front yard (WARNING: It is not advisable to sit under a tree when lightning bolts are flashing all around you. Do as I say, not as I do.) When the whistle went off, we took that as our cue to find our way indoors. Just as we entered the house, little pings of hail could be heard bouncing off of the roof, then it broke loose and began hailing like it meant to do some damage. I went out into the carport and the wind was blowing the hail sideways right into the van, the house and my dumb butt. I don't know if you have ever been in a Texas hail storm, but dang, that crap hurts when it bounces off of your melon at 50 or 60 mph.


It hailed for about 10 minutes, nothing too large so the roof should be okay. We will have to wait for daylight to asses the damage to Cody's truck and our van, but I believe that they made it through the storm without too much damage. The people in mineral Wells, about 50 miles from here were not so lucky, news footage showed that they had baseball to grapefruit sized hail pounding their houses and cars. They showed the obligatory footage of the local car dealership which had major damage to their cars hoods and windshields. They showed video taken from their helicopter showing that the landscape was covered in about 1 1/2 inches of what looked like snow but was actually hail stones (very impressive).



Well, back to my initial reason for posting tonight... the pain simply began to pass as the storm and it's accompanying front began to pass through the area. It amazes me to no end that I am able to predict storms with my pain level. This is a talent that I would just as soon lose.


This weekend is the Mainstreet Arts Festival downtown. Every year, hundreds of artists gather together on Main Street and display their art to be judged and sold to the public. Every year, mother nature shows up and throws a major hissy fit. This year she decided to do it on the first day of the festival so they were able to get everything buttoned down and get the lighter crowds off of the streets so that the casualties would be low. I know that the reason for having the festival in April is that the temps are very pleasant, but this is the time of year when we can expect good old mom to go a little crazy just about every week. It seems to me that October would be the ideal time to get out and get artsy, when the weather is more likely to be nice and calm, but that's just my 2 pennies.

~marty