There's sort of an ice/sleet storm moving through the area this weekend (and for the next couple of days) so I thought I'd share a few pictures I took after the ice storm from earlier this year. These are from Heritage Park in Farmington Hills, a few weeks before I moved down to KC.

Just in case you need a new recipe...

http://www.kctv5.com/holidays/14651718/detail.html

Woo picture updates!

So I went to Worlds of Fun with Kellee and Raymond (not pictured). We went for Haunts and Coasters, which is a Halloween thing they do, and it was pretty cool. It was dark, very uncrowded, and about 58-60 degrees, so it was perfect. It's basically a miniature Cedar Point.

The Thursdays at JJ's crowd - Micah, Julie and myself. There are others that go most weeks as well, but I don't really have a good picture of all of us, so this is what you get. :)

Ah, Michigan-Michigan State gameday. Dave, on the far left, is a MSU grad. He actually wanted me to fly my dad out there to watch the game with us. Except he didn't tell me until the day before...so it was a little late. Micah and Julie were there to watch the KU-Nebraska game earlier in the day, and stayed to watch the UM-MSU game with me and Dave and a bunch of other Michigan fans that were there. And by a bunch, I mean 5. Oh well, I live in Kansas, not exactly Big 10 country out here.

My friend Dan got married last weekend - so here's a few pictures from that. Allie, Chris and I outside the church after the ceremony...

...and the group of us with our big cameras. From left, Dave, me, Chris, Mike and Andrea.

That's it for now, and brings it pretty much up to date. I won't be home for Thanksgiving, but I will be home for Christmas, which is sooner than it seems. Yay!

Oops...I guess it's been a while. Here's some pictures to make up for it. :)

This one was of a storm that passed through - just gorgeous.

I came home for my birthday, and had an awesome time.

Two weeks later, I found myself in NYC to visit my friend Chris.


The next weekend was the American Royal Parade in Kansas City. This is Tom, one of our reporters, emceeing the event, but I just liked the picture with the skyline in the background. I got "commissioned" to take pictures of the parade for the station website.

Here's another picture from the parade of an antique fire truck. There were a lot of horses and marching bands, but it was also the longest parade I've ever seen (over 2 hours solid).

That pretty much brings it back up to date. I'll try to be a little better about updating the blog. I've been playing softball on the KCTV softball team, although we have managed to get rained out 3 weeks in a row now, which is pretty impressive. That's really about it!

Animals in the weather center!

Representatives from Sea World in San Antonio came up to Kansas City, mainly for a publicity tour, but they stopped by the station today and "helped us out" with our weather segments during the 4pm newscast. I got to hold a wallaby. It was awesome.

Here's the wallaby...wish I could remember his name.

This is one of the penguins, they were named Penny and Pete. No idea which is which.

This is the tegu, Ginobli (yes, named after Manu). It looked like a mix between a lizard and an alligator, but is, in fact, a giant lizard.

Here's both of the penguins. They were hilarious.

Ginobli again.

And the wallaby again. So cute.

I love a good cumulus cloud.



It was pouring rain and sunny at the same time today. Also awesome.


Ironically, as I was typing this (and thinking what a great, gentle, spring thunderstorm), I got called into work because there were tornado warnings to the south, and warnings got issued on this storm, likely as I was looking at it. Oh well - life in Kansas.

Alex came down to Kansas City for the weekend this weekend, and we went to the Twins game this afternoon. The weather was absolutely perfect (75 and sunny for the first pitch, 80 and sunny by the end, and we were sitting in the shade with a nice breeze). The Twins won, and it was really an interesting game to watch the whole time. Also helping along was the fact that I got free tickets from the television station I work at, and they were good seats, and we were surrounded by other Twins fans. Good stuff. Here are some pictures from the afternoon.

This was the view from our seats.


This is us at the game, decked out in Twins gear. Surprisingly, there were a large number of Twins fans there. Yes, we know we should have taken the picture with us in the sun as well so it wouldn't be so dark. Oh well - next time.

I spent a while this morning at Antioch Park, which is down the street from my apartment. Another gorgeous day. Here's a few of the pictures I took...

This is actually still in my apartment complex - those are the mailboxes. The flowering trees are gorgeous.

These are the tulips outside the office building next door to my apartment, but the tulips here are amazing, the colors are so bright. A lot of offices have these tulips out front, including the building where I work. They're beautiful.

Cute duck. No real story there.

This is another duck. I don't know what kind, but it's pretty.

This park is full of unsafe little bridges, but they sure are cute. If you look closely, there's a squirrel jumping across this one.

There's also a lot of winding paths through the park. Scenic.

This is another one of those unsafe bridges. Strange, but cool looking.

This is what a very angry, territorial goose looks like when swimming across the water quickly to scare off people coming near his mate.

A long, winding boardwalk that goes around the pond. Pretty cool.

These are the flowering trees that line the street along the edge of the park.

It's going to get a lot colder here soon, hopefully all these flowers don't die. I'm more sad about losing the 80 degree weather, but that's just me.

I've been waiting to take pictures of my apartment complex until a night like this, when the sun was shining and it was nice outside. Tonight was gorgeous, 68 degrees and sunny. Tomorrow is going to be even warmer, it's awesome. Anyway, here's where I live...

This is the center, grassy area that was covered in snow in a previous post.

Here's the general look of all the buildings in the complex.

This is the grassy area that my apartment overlooks. I went to the other side of the carport to take this picture because it kinda blocks the view, but this is basically what I see out my sliding door from my patio.

This is one of the two fountains on the property, and the one closest to my apartment.



And, because there are never enough sunset photos, this is a sunset from a few weeks ago out my sliding door.

This past weekend I went to Virginia Tech for a Theta Tau colony certification. It was fine, everything went well (except my uber-delayed flight Friday from Atlanta to Roanoke, which ended up being on an un-airconditioned plane. Yeah, that...not so much.) Anyway, VA Tech's campus was gorgeous, so I decided to post a few pictures of it.

This was the graduate school building, where I assume all the offices and things for the graduate school are. I just thought it was a cool building.

This one, and the next two, are Drill Field from right to left. VA Tech used to have a very large military presence on campus, and this is where drills were conducted, hence the name Drill Field. It's gorgeous and expansive.

Center view of Drill Field

Left view of Drill Field

Another center view of Drill Field from behind a monument. I can't remember what the monument is for.

This is a stone archway that connects two buildings. All the buildings (or most of them, anyhow) are made from this beautiful stone that apparently comes from VA Tech's own rock quarry. They call it Hokey Stone, because of the VA Tech mascot.


This is a better example of the Hokey Stone. This is one of the buildings that the stone arch is attached to.

Anyhow, that's how I spent my weekend. I look forward to this coming weekend, where I can finally relax and not do anything - I haven't had one of those in a while.

I guess it's official :)

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So I lived through my first severe weather "event" at work, and it was pretty much as expected. 14 hour shift, 1pm til 3am the next morning, wall-to-wall coverage (meaning no commercials and no television shows, just straight weather for almost 6 hours).

These are the storm reports from that day/night. The line of red dots (tornadoes) is about an hour (or two) south of Kansas City, but certainly within the viewing area.

This is a screen capture from a NWS employee's video camera. This was the largest tornado, and caused the most damage. Because it happened at night, the only time you could see it was when lightning flashed, so there are no still images of it, only captures from video. It was rated an EF4 on the new Enhanced Fujita scale, which is the strongest tornado this year, and also the earliest in the season that a tornado of this size has formed in Kansas.

Here is a radar image of the storm that produced that massive tornado. If you see something like this and it's near where you are...it might be wise to get in the basement.

Here is an image of the storm velocities. The radar is on the ground at the NWS office in Pleasant Hill, MO. The red means that the wind is coming towards the radar, and the green means the wind is blowing away from the radar, which makes sense because the winds for this storm were coming from the west. However, if you look at the bottom of the big blob, you'll see a bright area. That indicates where the tornado was, because the winds are rotating and therefore not coming straight into the radar at that point.

Well, that's enough for now. I'm sure I'll have more of these to talk about as the severe weather season starts picking up, but in the meantime, I'm enjoying the temperatures that are starting to climb into the 60s and 70s on a daily basis. Thank goodness - I was so tired of winter.