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The “History” of Storms

24 May 2007

We had some severe thunderstorms move through the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area yesterday afternoon that pelted my house with marble-sized hail. (There were reports of “tennis ball” hail in the area, although the largest I saw on the news was closer to “golf ball.”)

I heard sirens and along with the rattle of chunks of ice raining hard against the windows upstairs, I decided I better wake up my 16-month-old daughter from her nap and head to the basement with the dog and whatever cats I could collect along the way. (My wife was at work.)

By the time I got down there and logged in to an old computer to check the radar, the heavy stuff had passed. I went up to see what TV news had to say about the whole thing, and was treated to this staple of Minneapolis storm reporting:

“This storm has a history of producing high winds and hail.” And so on. “This storm has a history of (blah blah blah)…”

It sounds just a touch pretentious, don’t you think?* What’s next, Mr. Weather Person? Are you going to hold up a manila folder and say, “I have its file right here. This is a bad one, it is. Just look at this rap sheet. Tsk, tsk.”

Can’t we simply say: “This storm has produced high winds and hail.”?

*Let’s not discuss my own glass house of self-important ramblings, vulnerable to the stinging hail of irony.

Related:The Recklessness of Storms

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 24 May 2007 at 3:07 pm
filed under miscellany, quibbles

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Comments

  1. Yah, we felt them down here in Iowa, too. No hail, but plenty of rain and lightening.

    So one storm passed and it cleared up, and I set out for a quick walk to the corner market for just a couple things. Ten minutes there, a minute inside, and came back out - and it was like God in Heaven overflowed his bathtub! I ended up hanging out at the store for about an hour until it cleared up again.

    How did you like that one big snow/ice storm around the end of February? That was the last time we had trees pulled down from a storm in our area.

    Posted by Penguin Pete on 27 May 2007 at 11:50 pm

  2. Hey, Pete. It seems like you guys are getting all the storms these past couple of years — all the time I notice large storms rolling through Iowa and missing us up here.

    I had read your post about the Feb. storm and meant to comment on it (or did I?) — you had it a lot worse down there. I think it was just a snowstorm for us here, without all the ice.

    Thanks for stopping by — I enjoy reading your blog and have been planning to point to one of your recent posts that relates to what I’ve been doing lately.

    Posted by Scott Carpenter on 28 May 2007 at 9:52 am

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