I am usually at work when weather hits but this storm was driven by a front and built overnight until it exploded. I was in Center Point when the little red weather radio in the kitchen announced Fredericksburg was getting ping pong ball sized hail. It wasnt until i got to work the next day that staff notified me that certain parts of fredericksburg were blessed with tennis ball sized hail. The patient i was seeing asked me to pull up her window blinds. Upon doing so i noted a big circular hole in the glass which provided direct access to the exposed window screen.
The circular piece of glass that was missing was sitting at the bottom of the window, held in place by the screen and window ledge. There were shards of glass around it but for the most part the whole circle had stayed intact after it had been punched out of the bigger piece. The grass beneath the window was flooded. It was just one of many hail storms that would roll through in the span of two weeks, and people wondered why i opted out of a glass skylight on the greenhouse. Weather.
Wow!
Just yesterday we had a vicious system rip through the hill country. I got lucky. I was sitting in the one gap between these huge fat red diagonal lines on the radar. I got to see all of it nearby but not be blessed with the softball sized hail and tornado others got. The sky was jet black and mean looking. The wind was blowing like crazy and the hail clouds started arriving. Everyone pulled their cars under the roofed area where the ambulance pulls up and i told em they couldnt do that but they were more worried about hail than a ticket. When it came time to go home i hung out for another hour because i could see on the radar that the town between me and home as well as my town were getting hit. So i avoided it all but the town between me and fredericksburg got a carpet of pea sized hail that made it look like it snowed, my town got rain and wind so everything was blown about the yard when i got back and Cashew had hulked herself half out of the crate like a crazy person and i had to spend a good twenty minutes bending it back into a rectangular shape. The only reason she was still in it was the two padlocks holding the sides together. Waco of course got the softball sized hail again. They always seem to get the worst of it. If you live in texas, glass skylights are a stupid idea. :p
I didnt work for them at the point when this happened but everyone still talks about years ago when the roof blew off the facility.
Ouch. That is not good.
It has to be even worse for/with people with impaired cognition or mobility.
Yeah, weather is probably way more scary when you have dementia or cant duck for cover anymore. However, most of my patients in that town used to be farmers so they’re all pretty familiar with nature’s fury. I will never forget my late former patient who used to be a curmudgeony old retired sheep farmer. He used to sit in the front room and watch through the windows, waiting on that weather. The storms only came through with off-the-charts fury a few times a year but he waited on them 365 days a year. Staring intently at that horizon looking for signs was his full time hobby. Now theres a handful of patients that sit in the rocking chairs on the porch in front of the facility and do the same thing he did years ago, but with less intensity. Watch the weather. I think its their form of tv. Some watch the news. Old farmers watch the weather. Thats the only news they care about, and all of them trust their eyeballs over the guy on the tv out of san antonio, even the ones with cataracts.
Sometimes I wonder if the TV weather people’s offices have windows. 🙂
Tis the general consensus around here lol!