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.

Well, we had the apartment post, now here's the work post.

This is (from left) Katie, myself and Devon. Katie is the chief meteorologist, and Devon does weekend evenings. (PS - yes, that is my forecast in the background.)

This is a wider view than before of the right side of the weather center. That's Katie on the computer.

This is a wider view of the left side of the weather center.

And just for posterity, this is Doug. He's the lead promotions producer, and all around a pretty nice guy. He came down to visit me (really, to tell me that Katie was in one of the teases), and since I had my camera, I decided to take a picture of him, too.

I'm sure from time to time I will post more pictures of work-related stuff, but for now, this is it. Any questions? Let me know.

Here is my "office", the weather center at KCTV. This is where I spend my days (and some nights). My lens is too long to be able to see the whole thing, and Katie was out sick, so I'll be bringing my camera back in to get better pictures.

That's Devon - he is the weekend evening meteorologist, but he was in working for Katie since she is sick. After I took this picture...my battery died. I will charge the battery back up and bring the camera in another day to get better pictures.