I’ve been in Cape a couple days more than a month in the hottest stretch of weather since 1936. It might have sprinkled a couple of drops during that time, but I don’t remember them. We’ve had some flashes and rumbles that got hopes up for nothing.
This afternoon, though, the skies started to darken and the radar started showing a line of reds and yellows headed our way. I bought Mother a new portable weather radio, so I broke it out of its blister pack and started wading through the miniscule type to figure out how to set it up for Cape county and the area where her trailer is on Kentucky Lake. I was getting pretty close to done, I thought, when NOAA squawked out a severe thunderstorm warning. It startled me so much that I almost pitched it like a snake.
I decided to run out to the car before the rain started to get my video camera. Maybe we’d get something worthwhile.
Video of approaching (but not arriving) storm
We caught some pretty impressive wind in advance of the storm – the airport south of Cape logged a 53-mph gust. The initial rain pelted down hard, but then slacked off. That’s probably a good thing: the ground is so hard that anything that splashed down would have immediately run off.
The .014 inches of rain recorded at the airport in about an hour and a half won’t go far in helping what has been classified as an “exceptional drought.” Be ready for higher food prices. There’s no relief in sight.
Storms of 2011
What a difference a year makes.
- Last spring we were hit with a hail storm
- We got to watch an alien shapeshifter (or a bunch of balloons) down by the Diversion Channel
- Sandbaggers try to save Dutchtown
- Cape’s flood control project pays for itself
Fortunately for us the rain lasted about 2-3 hours. Heavy rain and wind slacked off to slow rain that held for awhile. We will see noticeable greening in two days. Fortunately, in the bootheel below Sikeston, most of the farm land is irrigated. There have been some people talking about the water table getting too low to pump water, but our well is still yielding full pressure.
Wow! You are going high tech with video….pretty neat!!
Thanks. I’m finding myself doing more and more video. This one came together pretty cleanly. With a couple of exceptions, it was presented in the order in which it was shot.
Just before the storm rolled in, I dashed downstairs where my computer is to get the radar shots. Luckily, just then the weather alert went off. The actual pictures of the screen with the warning in the background weren’t sharp, so I used the good audio on top of the good video.
Years of shooting picture stories made the photography end of it pretty easy (except that I had to remember that videos are horizontal, not vertical).
The killer is getting good, clean audio. It doesn’t matter how good the pictures are if the sound is lousy.
The longest, most challenging and most popular video I’ve done (viewed 42,788 times so far) was Bill’s Transition to Jacqie. It was challenging because I wanted to be sensitive to the topic; it involved shooting in several locations on different days, some in lousy light; I needed to boil down more than two hours of recordings into about 10 minutes, and because I didn’t really know what I was doing.
There are things I’d do a lot differently today, but I’m pleased how at how well it has been received.
I’m glad you enjoyed the rain shower.