SOLSTICE STORM

Celebrating the solstice with a severe thunderstorm in Jacksonville.  A hot afternoon in Florida just about guarantees a storm of varying degrees of severity.  This baby blew up over Jacksonville while we were visiting the Jacksonville Zoo, and then I insisted that we chase it around a bit.  You do not want to ride in a car with me when I am chasing.  I steer with my right knee while I take my pictures.  This is an exceptionally stupid practice and I cannot recommend it.  Mr. B. will tell you that I did this today while driving over a high bridge.

I was hoping to get a picture of Jacksonville’s most notorious tourist attraction–the twin nuclear cooling towers on the St. John’s River–but the storm refused to move in that direction.  Instead, I found a couple of urban-ugly processing plants and used the storm as a backdrop.

The aftermath of the storm was a beautiful, hot-poker sunset (taken in Alachua with raindrops on my windshield):

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STORM PORN

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Florida storms, nature, Storm clouds

It’s that time of year where I have to confess to my storm addiction.  Two years ago, I was terrified of a cloud.  I lived in a place where nearly clear blue skies were the norm and thunderstorms were a rare exception.  I can count three times I saw lightning (one storm was magnificent) and one time I heard thunder.

And then I drove across country, nervously dodging cumulus towers and nearly panicking when the sky turned black in Mississippi. I saw my first supercell thunderstorm in Texas, but I was able to watch it from a sixth-floor hotel room in Amarillo (this was the Childress tornado on 6/15/2008).

My first summer in Florida was partially spent in a little closet tucked away under the stairs of my apartment.  As soon as I arrived in Florida, I sent away for a NOAA SAME weather radio and amused/terrified myself for several months each time the alert sounded with a severe thunderstorm warning.  The day the radio blared out a tornado warning I swore I was going to pack up and move immediately to Newfoundland.

Something happened, though. From abject terror I went to absolute fascination.  I now love photographing storm clouds and as summer approaches I am building a nice collection.

The photos here have been taken over the past couple of weeks.  A thick cloud layer hung over Gainesville one night as we approached from the south, and as I snapped away from my car, Mr. B. mentioned that I was not the only driver taking photos.  Another storm sprang up as we left the Florida Folk Festival and I drove through it (another milestone), but not before stopping to grab a few photos of a fake funnel cloud (no rotation).

No more running home from Publix when the bag boy announces that the sky outside is black.  No more studying the giant storm drains on SW 20th and wondering if they would provide a temporary tornado shelter if the driving, flooding rain were of less magnitude than the panic of the driver.

How dull.  Now what? Cave diving?

Approaching Gainesville from the south.

The driver in front of me also photographed the cloud.  This was taken at the Archer Road exit off I-75.

Same storm, two miles west.  Taken from the Tower Road Publix parking lot.  Looks pretty ominous, but it didn’t contain any firebolts.

Leaving the Florida Folk Festival, I decided to chase this mess that was moving over Lake City.  This photo was taken headed south on U. S. 41 just outside of White Springs.

Here’s the fake funnel cloud beginning to form beneath the cloud.  I’d have driven in the opposite direction two years ago.  Now, I headed right towards it, after having a minor argument with Mr. B. when I wanted to pull over to make sure that it wasn’t rotating before I plowed ahead.

It mimicked a funnel.  I often see these things hanging out of Florida clouds, but this was the first time I’d taken a good picture of one.

Mr. B. wanted to go back to Falling Creek Falls, which is located just north of Lake City.  This didn’t look like the time to visit, but I drove towards it just the same.

We both agreed that this was not the time to go trekking around outside…

Although the murky sky made Florida’s astounding greens even greener.

We ended up driving back towards Gainesville, and shortly after I took this photo the clouds boiled over and pelted rain for the next 20 miles.  I drove right through it, taking some pleasure in putting on my hazards.  The experience reminds me that a drop of rain could stall California traffic for hours.

NATURE’S WEATHER RADIO

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gainesville florida tourism, Kanapaha Botanical Gardens

It’s a good idea to stay inside during a thunderstorm.  That’s just common sense.  Don’t take a shower, don’t fiddle around with electrical appliances, don’t decide this is the time to build a fort in your back yard.  Just stay put, and if the kids are bored then they will either be bored or learn to rustle up some enthusiasm for checkers.

Yesterday, Mr. B. was bored as I cut short our storm-spotting to head home.  The weather had gotten murkier and in the distance I could see something rolling in.  It was hard to tell exactly where it was rolling, though. I know Mr. B. pretty well, he’s an outdoors guy, so I didn’t suggest that we go back to my apartment and play mahjong.  Beating men at mahjong is a feminine art and privilege best reserved for those times when a woman has failed at properly felling a tree or changing a tire.

So it was that I agreed to Mr. B.’s suggestion to stop at the Kanapaha Botanical Gardens.  We have a season pass and it’s a great place for photography.  If a storm were truly on the way, it hadn’t materialized yet.  The skies looked ominous (another fun word you get to use in Florida) but there wasn’t any lightning or audible thunder.

We flashed our pass at the clerk, who told us that we’d just about missed the annual rose show.  She said nothing about the weather. This struck me as a bit of an oversight:  Had I been manning the desk, I’d have said, “It’s probably nothing, but are you aware we are in the middle of a tornado watch from a storm system that just yesterday produced a massive EF3 in Mississippi?”

I don’t know about you, but this is the type of information I’d like to have.  I already knew it and had made a choice to visit the gardens anyway, but it did make me think about buying a small weather radio to bring with me when I visit other parts of Florida.

We had a short look at the prize roses that was long enough to let me know that I couldn’t tell a prize rose from a dud rose, and then we headed out towards the swamp platform and began to take some pictures.  It was so gloomy that I got an immediate primer on photography by realizing that I needed to use flash.  What an advance in skill! Not only, I even tinkered with manual settings to produce some stunning pictures of palm trees whose overexposure created a surreal landscape of acid greens.

A short while after arriving, there was a giant bird chorus behind some of the palms.  The chorus was agitated and off-key and was soon joined by an amphibian chorus from the frogs in Lake Kanapaha. I looked at Mr. B. and said, This is a storm warning.  Nature knew it was high time to get out of the soup.  As it was, we were the only people wandering around the garden, and, as much as we wanted to see the herbs and vines, it was time to scram.  When I got home, I realized that the birds and frogs had acted as a weather radio, announcing the storm at the same time the NWS had. 

The storm rolls by in thick masses of gray.

Botany is not my strong suit. I have no idea what this is.

Japanese maple, and I only know that because I was able to match identifying placard to tree.  This is not always the case.

Indoors, at the rose show.  After making small talk with a rose fancier about scent differentiation in roses, I got the impression that I was a rose rube.

Here is where I started using flash.

Many people are disappointed to learn that Kanapaha doesn’t have more flowers.  It’s a botanical garden, not a flowering one.  For flowers, head to Bok Gardens in Polk County.  Kanapaha’s strength is its verdancy.

This over-exposure makes it look as if the day were pleasant.

Sunlight reproduced by over-exposure.  It actuality, it was so dark that the palms were photographing as black.

TORNADO WATCH 104

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Florida tornadoes, Tornado watch 104

The following pictures were taken during tornado watch 104, issued by the National Weather Service on Sunday.  A couple of these were taken at my apartment complex before the first big thunderstorm rolled through.  The remainder were taken when I decided to go storm-spotting on the observation platform at Paynes Prairie.

At the time I decided to go spotting, there seemed to be a break in the weather.  I am what might be called a cowardly spotter.  A few minutes before, a tornado warning had been issued for a place called Tobacco Patch Landing in Marion County.  Since the warning wasn’t in Alachua County and since I could see a hazy, weak sun trying to peek through to the east, I jumped in the car with Mr. B.  Mr. B. was itching to get out of the house. Before leaving, I made a note to add Tobacco Patch Landing to my list of places to visit.  I understood that my excitement would necessarily be measured;  history proves that the very best place-names do not have any signage in front of which one could pose for the folks back home.  This is why there are no pictures of me drinking moonshine at Brown’s Still or shaking hands with the guy for whom Mikesville is named. Tobacco Patch Landing has such a L’il Abner ring to it that as soon as the clouds break I am headed straight there, perhaps wearing Daisy Dukes. Or not.

You couldn’t have dragged me out of my apartment two years ago if there were even a remote chance of a tornado.  Progress has been made since this time.

My NOAA SAME weather radio rang multiple times during the day.  I have it set up for alarms in all contiguous counties and even some that are not contiguous but in whose bad weather I am interested, like Duval County.

I like talking about the weather, because it gives me a chance to use expressions like “deteriorating conditions” and “evacuate mobile homes.” I’ve taught myself to read radar and I have a special hand-held barometer that confirms why my makeup is sliding off my face.

The usual Sunday routine was going on as we drove to Paynes Prairie.  Butler Plaza was crowded with the pickup trucks of rural shoppers who come to Wal-Mart on the weekend, Archer Road was the usual log-jam, and people strolled out of KFC still chewing on a leg of fried chicken.

It was just like Friday and the Friday before that, too.  I have a new Florida slogan:  Get on with it.  When I first came here, I recall being amazed that people would shop in Lowe’s garden center during a lightning storm, but that’s Florida for you, full of pioneering spirit.

The view from my apartment, a few minutes after the tornado watch was issued.

Looking due west, towards Archer.

The view above the Tuffy Auto Service Center at Butler Plaza.  Business as usual at the ever-popular Butler Plaza.  Butler Plaza is a retail hub for the region, although it has lost some of its luster from competition in Chiefland, which is about 40 minutes west of Gainesville.

Paynes Prairie. The dull light was great for photography.

This rabbit was not rabbity about the marginal weather and took its time enjoying its dinner.  The rabbit is the only creature other than birds that I have seen on this part of the prairie, although I understand the cottonmouth slithers around it with abandon.

Looking southwest.  This storm moved in our direction and caused a severe thunderstorm warning while we were still out.  More on that tomorrow; something quite interesting happened.

The sky was clearer to the northeast.

Looking northward on the 441, I could see another storm moving over my part of Gainesville.  We got into the car and spent the next hour, or the duration of the severe thunderstorm warning that was issued around the time this photo was taken, ambling around Kanapaha Botanical Gardens.