Now I would like to start off by letting all the readers know...that I was not in an actual tornado but...it was a pretty cool picture to use to explain my first track meet yesterday. My team and I traveled to Fort Valley, Ga to compete in our season opener which turned out to be the exact opposite. The travel down from Atlanta was filled with rain and minor thunderstorms and not much changed when we finally arrived. We ran down in Peach county (never heard of it...note that i am a native of GA) high school in the middle of nowhere just as the image above shows lol. The track wasnt in horrible shape but was located basically in the middle of nowheresville I actually could spot a barn off in the distance.
So i hop off the bus to get a couple of laps in and I felt really good overall the best that I have felt my entire collegiate career before a competition. Training has been very extensive and i accredit that to my Training partner and Coach Pamela Page. So I hopped back on the bus to stay out of the rain and rest a little before my actual warm up...soon after all of the jumpers and throwers who were out warming up come back to the bus due to lightning in the distance...soon after we here tornado warnings and are transported to the gym where we waited about an hour and left shortly after to come back to Atlanta.
Pretty interesting....I know; I'm actually a little upset about the situation because this sets me one meet behind in the attempt to qualify for Nationals...but we will just go back out to practice monday...(if it ever stops snowing) and revamp the gameplan for next weekend.
A pretty amazing and interesting tornado picture. I do not think you want to be in the middle of that tornado. I have been near funnel clouds several times during my days in the Pittsburgh area and too many close calls here in Florida in Orlando and Lakeland. I live in a mobile home park here in Lakeland, and when Hurricane Francis was exiting into the Gulf,an area of storms associated with Francis with funnel clouds was spiraling back into land. A small funnel club on Labor day Monday morning was coming right toward my mobile home. I ran to the bathroom, and actually felt the pressure change and heard it come right between me and my neighbors mobile homes. By the Grace of God, it somehow was just high enough to miss the houses and trees we had here at the time. Really wild stuff. The other times were at night and I just felt the pressure change and heard it. Again, another miracle by God to save my and other peoples mobile homes in this park. You never know why some funnel clouds touchdown to be tornados and why some stay up in the air and never actually become a tornado. The atmospheric conditions do crazy things. Hurricane Jeanne was what really did its damage to our mobile home park and the Lakeland area a few weeks later in 2004 with no tornados, but hurricane force winds and gust over 100mph. I will never forget that night because I was feeling really too horrible from my dystonia condition to evacuate to a shelter. So, I stayed home and I will never forget when the winds got bad and the streetlights were bouncing back and forth like bobblehead dolls. Seeing and hearing the main electric lines from outside our park blowing up with the blue lights like lightning. We have underground electric lines in our park. The park next to us has above gound electric lies and they were blowing out like crazy. I kept hearing buzz noises and seeing blue lights because the hurricane force winds started to hit here at about 3 AM. Very surreal and kind of scary. I can tell you this, I got to know my bedroom bathroon way to well for 6 hours as Mean Jeanne moved very slowly toward the Northwest and toward the Gulf. Again, by the grace of God, I only had minor damage to my porch roof. I could hear carports and parts of roofs blowing off nearby mobile homes, and trees falling while I was in my bathroom. It really was a crazy, scary, and surreal scene. I am an alum of Penn State and have a background in meteorology, but officially got my B.A. degree in Speech Communication. I took a lot of meteorolgy courses but just could not stand anymore physics courses. I actually have a weather station in my backyard. It is a wind anemometer with wind direction and speed, temperature, dewpoint, barometric pressure, and electronic rain gauge. I am a weather geek. There are many weather geeks from PSU. Now that I bored you with just a taste of my EJHeat weather geek info, I hope you feel better from being under the weather. That is the bottom line because me and meteorologist Coach E said so!!!!
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