Storm Chasing

Yesterday I nearly lost my mind to the point where I decided I'd give NASCAR a shot. I mean, seriously, there was nothing at all on TV. So I flipped it over to FOX to watch the beginning of the race. FOX's weather guru, Ian Leonard was on the screen, standing in front of a huge FOX-9 Ultra 3-D Super Mega Doppler Radar. He seemed quite irritated that people were calling into the station to complain that they were interrupting NASCAR for tornado warnings. Now THIS was entertaining. At one point he even said "The race hasn't even started! This is frakkin' serious!" or something close to that.

After watching Leonard explain the decision to break into the race I noticed a small white blob on the Doppler headed towards Coon Rapids. Hey, I live in Coon Rapids, but it looks nice outside. Maybe I should watch a little more. It was starting to get dark outside, but no rain yet or anything. At 4:35 Ian said there was a tornado on the ground so I told the kids to get in the basement, but they were already down there playing the Wii. The sirens then went off, it got windy, rained a bit and then cleared up. Surely this was another case of Ian making something out of nothing.

So I hopped into the car and drove around a bit, looking for the twister. I drove about 1 mile east and found several trees uprooted and stop signs twisted. It appears that it touched down about a mile away. Lucky break for me indeed. If the tornado had struck my immediate neighborhood my cable surely would've been affected and I wouldn't have been able to watch Game 2 tonight. Then again, if I were a Pens fan maybe I'd consider myself unlucky.

Side note: the most fetching news anchor poll has closed and Campbell Brown narrowly edged Soledad O'Brien for the win. I think Ann Curry deserved more votes, but the people have spoken.

Second side note: I just finished reading the Sports Guy's book about the Red Sox. Bill Simmons is the funniest sports columnist today. Even if you're not a baseball fan it's worth checking out.