Storm Night

Monday the 25th,
It wasn't bad here at all, not really.  Sure it rained and rained hard.   After our Sunday's rainy weather, I emptied an inch and a half of water out of the rain gauge this morning. This evening I poured another inch and 5/8(s) of water.  Our ground is saturated.  I'd love to do a bit of fertilizer on the yard - I'd like to spray a bit of weed poison on the yard - I'd like to saturate the yard with bug killer (the chiggers are thick this year).   But, nooooo. I have to keep waiting for the rains to stop.  No sense doctoring up the yard with this rain.
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Supposedly rain has been coming towards us all day today.  On radar you could see a mass of rain just west of us.  It missed us all day.  I understand bro Jim in Pottsboro had a tough day.  Not us.  I played ball with Oscar  (we had a good time) and I sat on the back porch reading the newspaper most of the afternoon.  I even set up my Sirius  radio and listen to Frank while I read - took a short nap.
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About 4:30, BJ came outside to show me da radar.  It was just west of us still but a cloud was moving up from the south.  We dogs moved into the house to play it safe from the lightning.  The guy on TV was showing an area near Fairfield - straight south of us - which has rotation, actually he had 2 different spots on the screen.    I watched as the rotation moved closer and closer.  Our weather alert radio kept interrupting our solitude with warnings.
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Had an epiphany.  My brain doesn't always remember what the "bright" things to do - are.  I turned on my cell phone and found an app called Scanner Radio. This connected me with the Navarro County Office of Emergency whatever  .....  On the radio (phone app) we followed the tornado - now down to one storm - north towards our lake.  One of the radio guys was hooked up to radar - Corsicana has a big radar unit in town.  Eventually, the radar feller told another guy that the tornado would cross Hwy 287 about on top of the "Big" bridge.   The other guy was east of the bridge and could watch it happen.
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The phone app followed the storm north as it crossed the bridge and headed towards the town of Kerens.  Instead of Kerens, it moved off to the East towards Trinidad.  It was fun ( in a way ) listening to the police call the fire dept. in Kerens and tell them to activate their alarm system.  After the storm came closer to Trinidad, it left our county. Navarro County signed off as it left.  I did not follow it anymore by finding another scanner to hear.  An aside:  the radar man reported this was the same storm that had been in Thorndale earlier.  That is pretty far away from here, nearer Austin.
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I am thinking that I will invest in a super duty scanner which won't rely on my phone and its cell tower signal for results - a battery powered one per chance with some bells and whistles.   [ Our weather scanner has new batteries = that is a good lesson to learn. ]   A good, high-quality scanner....yep.  Long story short (too late) we were able to follow the progression of the storm as it crossed Navarro County.  While we might have hidden in a closet with the 4 dogs, these gentlemen led us through the potential problem.
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Storm gone.   Emptied water gauge.  Picked a couple of ripe plums off our tree.  Fed the dogs.  Watched TV.   Tomorrow is another...................................
m3