This was taken on our long walk on sand covered roads after Hurricane Ivan to retrieve whatever was not destroyed and that we could carry on our backs. Please note that house was previously on a foundation two blocks away and is ended up residing in the middle of my street.
Yet I continue to be fascinated by the natural science world as an adult. I have taken oceanography, geology and meteorology courses in college. Just to learn more. I feel I am the classic epitome of the cliche that I know just enough to be dangerous. My favorite of which is meteorlogy. I just love the weather. It’s predictable, yet very unpredictable. We know a storm might be coming, but exactly what it will be is a mystery.
I love to observe the clouds. I love to know exactly what I am looking at and the science behind how and why each cloud has formed. I just love to see a small cloud bellow out of control into a towering cumulous nimbus, sorry, a storm cloud. If you take the time to actually watch you can see the cloud grow and rise up into the sky until it meets the troposphere, which means someone is going to experience a strong storm and I am jealous.
For as long as I can remember I have had dreams about tornadoes. Sometimes I am chasing them, sometimes they are chasing me. Usually I do not get hit by them, but just watch them in the distance while fumbling unsuccesfully with my camera to try and get a photo. I have never photographed a tornado in real life either. (I did get a waterspout one time on record:)
They say tornado dreams are a symptom of living a chaotic life where you feel you have no control. I guess they may be right to some degree, but I also believe it is because I am always thinking about weather. I just hope it is not a premonition that I will someday be done in by a tornado :0
The other weather event I find myself in is hurricanes, and not so much in dreams but in real life. For the short amount of time I have lived done here in Florida I have been directly or indirectly affected by hurricanes Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, Ike, Rita, Gustav, Jeanne, Ernesto, Charlie, Isabel, and numerous other tropical storms. The worst for me being hurricane Ivan of course.
Well hurricane season just started a few days ago on June 1. we did get impact in late May by an unnamed storm, but so far all is quiet and remains to look like it will be for a bit as high pressure and wind shear dominate the Gulf of Mexico and most of the Atlantic Basin. But I do like to track the storms and know what is going on out there so i purchased a new home weather station. I mounted the wind and rain sensors on the roof so they can sustain around 100 mile per hour winds, anything more than that I will have evacuated i hope anyway. I also got a small handheld station to go to the beach to measure winds there like the meteorologists on the weather channel do. I figure I cannot control what mother nature does so I might as well roll with it and feed my curiosity. Where we live now we are safe from the storm surge, and wind will not hurt our compact cement built home except if it blows down one of the massive oak trees surrounding it. So if we get a big storm coming, we will evacuate because of them and because I cannot stand living without power!!
Plus hopefully we will have a little baby girl to think about. I wonder if she will be as fascinated with mother earth like her father is. I can only hope, but maybe if I ‘influence” her enough I can mold her into a budding scientist *LOL*