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 :)

Click here to see why

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.