Cloudy Day at the Lake

Lake Osakis Early Morning Storm Looking East. (This is exactly how I saw it. Dark, blurry and menacing.)

Our first day of cool, cloudy weather.  Everything is wet after steady wind and rain very early this morning.  I see a perfect opportunity!  And I am quite happy about it, too.

I thought I would come to the lodge and get some work done, maybe even a decent post to A Little Tour in Yellow, but I am not the only resorter who thinks a cool wet day is a good day for the lodge.

One family here enjoys sharp, loud noises.  They seem set on dropping pool balls, waste basket lids, and bottles among other things.  If there were a hammer and and anvil here, they surely would be lining up to take a turn at striking it.

My group can be guilty of an annoyance or two, I am sure, but at least we don’t shock the life out of people with obnoxious, ear-ringing bangs!  Maybe this family just can’t hear very well and these noises are their way of reaching out to each other, like dolphins clicking in the sea.  I say hello every time we meet, for example, and only get empty stares in reply.  Perhaps they just don’t notice me.  I did bring along some firecrackers…

So the idea of working in the lodge.  Well, alas, I will go wander a bit instead, try to get some ideas beneath me.

Minnesota Weather and Bridge Pilings

Exhibit 1

I don’t know what you call those structures that protect bridge pilings.  Maybe they don’t have a name.  (Although we do name everything, don’t we?  Especially engineers.)  But I am talking about those wedge-shaped structures designed to deflect ice, trees, and your runaway houseboat from hitting a bridge.

I mention it because I believe we have one of those protecting my part of Minnesota from any interesting weather.  Or maybe it is me.  Perhaps I am like Powder with strange powers to affect the physics of the world around me.  In my case it is a curse.  I love crazy weather and it seems to slip past me like a log floating in a gentle current.  I am a piling.  (I’ve been called much worse.)

Take a look at Exhibit 1.  This picture was taken almost a year ago, May 2011.  Storms were right on top of us in Linden Hills when…as if by magic…the storm split in two.  One half went south and this half went north.

Disappointing, but my weather life hasn’t always been such.

Once I was as close as you can get to a tornado without being killed.  It was a small one, but still took down some large trees.  Since I had never been in a tornado before I didn’t quite understand that swirling debris in a storm cloud hanging only feet above the tree tops might be serious.  Interestingly, I think, it wasn’t so much the visual cue as the audible one that told us we should jump into the house.  Tornadoes, even small ones, make quite a bit of noise.

We were in the back yard and when we came out to the front yard several large trees were down and the grass was pushed into crop circle patterns.  This was a storm passing through Long Lake, Minnesota, two years ago.

And two years ago I captured some fantastic pictures and video footage of a storm forming just north of Osakis, Minnesota, which would eventually become the tornado that hit Long Prairie on July 17, 2010.  That was a good year.  For storms.

Now I can’t even get a decent rain storm.  Forget about lightning and thunder.  I will be like prehistoric man huddled in a cave when that happens again, the freakishness of it all will cause me great stress.  And blizzards?  Myths.  Fables.  Things conjured up by the old timers to make us think they experienced more in the past than they do in the present.

All in all pretty quiet around these parts.  Tepid, timorous, teeny-weeny.  Dull, dull, dull.  Drives a man to drink more.  Might need a pith helmet. Maybe a nice chambray shirt and madras shorts.

Anyone want a lightly used weather radio?

(Yes, Weather Gods, I am indeed taunting you.)

Storm, Osakis, MN, July 17, 2010.

Related articles

• Tornadoes pound U.S. Plains, region braces for more (news.yahoo.com)
• National Weather Service Watch and Warning Criteria and Guide (nws.noaa.gov)