I braved the storm to go downtown to the Mill District on assignment for a special buzz.mn feature. Here are some actual harrowing shots of the grim, relentless weather they’d been predicting all day.
It appeared to be raining somewhere, perhaps across the river.
On the west side of the river, the storms had settled low, threatening to crush expensive condominiums:
Once home, I surveyed the damage from the winds. Branches are down:
We’ll be cleaning up all night, I fear.
(Note: this is actually a test to see if I can remotely host pictures and stick 'em right in the middle of the post without making the entire site collapse in a heap of smoking code. Cross your fingers.)
Not to say the storm didn't materialize; it did. It just didn't hit the Twin Cities, yet - although gusty winds knocked out power for 25,000 Metro residents. Look on the bright side: at least the TV season is over. In past years the storms have managed to arrive just as the Final Cliffhanger Episode of your favorite show is on, and the picture shrinks to a tiny box while a huge radar graphic informs you that it’s raining really, really hard in International Falls.
"Urgent Action-News Storm-Rad Doppler Weather Alerts"
...are fine when it's a potentially destructrive development you can do something to avoid, like a thunderstorm ("get that tinfoil hat off and get outta that tree, Jimmy!") or "tornadic activity" (an adjective that sounds bad no matter how you think about it).
But having my favorite show canceled at 9 p.m. because of a "high wind warning" in the dark really crisps my empanada!
What are you supposed to do, precisely? Go outside so the tree can fall on you directly, unimpeded by rafters? And would it not suffice to just stick a little "High Winds" text bar across the base of the screen, rather than making the "chief meterologist" do the Dance of the Blobs of Color in place of the season-ending episode of my program?