"bpnjensen" wrote in message
oups.com...
Brian Hill wrote:
"bpnjensen" wrote in message
oups.com...
I do unplug the euipment when I am not using it. It is so simple, and
so worthwhile - and we don't even have many electrical storms around
these parts (which is a shame, because I love them)...

BJ


We have elec storms here that sound like WWIII. You have to hear and see
it
to beleive it. You should see our hail, I've seen it the size of tennis
balls and I heard it was the size of grapefruit up north once. It most
the
time about the size of a dime to small rubber ball.

BH

Where dwellest thou?

I grew up in Massachusetts; we had lotsa t-storms there in summer.
They rarely, but occasionally, became tornadic (there is a localized
tornado maximum in Central Mass), and would also rarely have hail up to
about marble size. The main characteristics were wind, and a
thoroughly unbelievable frequency of lightning. The storms would often
bring a staccato roar that would not let up for upwards of an hour at a
time. One fabulous evening, after accompanying my friend on his paper
route, we bought ourselves pizzas and went to eat them on the front
steps of City Hall in Gardner, Mass, in the balmy evening air. Just as
we got under the overhang, the atmosphere opened up and the rain came
down in ceaseless torrents. Then the lightning - about every two
seconds for 45 minutes straight, earsplitting racket emanated from this
stately storm that made communications nearly impossible. It did,
however, allow us to tell whose pizza was whose in the dark. It was
hard riding home on my bike that night :-)

I went to school in Lubbock, TX - for meteorology - and there
discovered tornado chasing. The storns there were not particularly
electrical compared to New England (there was still some electricity,
of course) - but they were of a different nature, I think, large
isolated supercells that spun themselves into twisters with fair
regularity. True bliss. I got walloped by hard golf-ball hail,
smashed by baseball-sized slushy nuggets, we got spun up in an F-1
tornado (in a car, courtesy of a fun but somewhat foolhardy driver
whose current reports can be seen occasionally on Weather Channel), and
once - two other fellows and I were lightning-struck near Archer City,
Texas, while preparing to film. One of the strangest experiences of my
life.

Here in California, storms are both weak and infrequent. Bummer.

BJ


I'm from Marysville Calif and I always enjoyed getting evacuated during
flood season.

BH