As advertised in our last post, the number of tornado's were expected to rise as the National Weather Service at Ft. Worth got out in the field to investigate. The number as of last night was:
Ef 0: 3
Ef 1:7
Ef 2:4
The Wise Country and Grapevine tornadoes cause the most overall damage with only injuries and no deaths. Property damage will be pretty extensive.
Still on the weather front, but not tied to the tornadoes was an email that I got from my middle brother on 28 November from a private forecast service that warned of cold weather coming toward us from the Arctic.
"A second surge of very cold air is likely to arrive early next week, plunging us into the deep freeze for at least a few days. Then, expect freeze line all the way to the gulf. Warm up after the first of the year."
I do not see being out and about until that part of the text says, "Warm up after the first of the year". I do not mind being out in the cold. I did survive a winter of -17°F in the Great Lakes, but I do mind doing damage to my camera and especially the battery packs. Those little devils are expensive!
These latest tornadoes is a reminder that in North Texas, we seem to have a second season of weather outbreaks. Our traditional spring outbreak and the second one in October, November and December, recalling the deadly December tornadoes in Rockwall in 2015; North Dallas tornadoes in October 2019 that wiped out the well established shopping center at Preston and Royal Lane, leveling the Home Depot at Forest and Central Expressway coming onward as it popped open my front door and when I got up to shut the door was looking at the funnel cloud that missed me by a couple of football fields and destroyed many new homes in the Buckingham area and now, these most recent ones outside of Decatur, Grapevine and Northeast, being the one on the ground the longest.
Fickle weather when you are just 250 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico. Just right from the Pacific storms that slide down the coast and come across the deserts to meet the cold fronts from the North dropping south, Pacific storm pulling moisture up from the Gulf and right over North Texas, it all gets swirled into the mixing bowl and out spins tornadoes after tornadoes. We get through the winter month of February without any really cold weather and no ice storms, we are good to roll until about late April or May when it's round 1 again.
Here are pictures of two of the last three storms. The deadly Rockwall storms of 12/2015
and North Dallas
10/2019
