Showing posts with label Hail Storm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hail Storm. Show all posts

February 28, 2017

Live Writer Update and Storm Preparation

It must be the weather, I feel like writing blogs today and this is my 2nd post of the day.

My quest to find out all the information I could about Live Writer was short and to the point. I had forgot from my previous research that it is a Microsoft PC based program, not for Apple Macs.

I did look at alternatives to Live Writer for Macs, plus something called Open Live Writer, but even at the end in the FAQ section they admitted their program was not fully coded for use on any Mac products.

I ran into a blogger that had just moved to a Mac computer from a PC after "living on Live Writer" ... he listed an app that would work for Mac's but it was internet based and when I tried loading my blog into the program, ScribeFire did not play well with Blogger and wouldn't load the blog for it to work.


He suggested what I always thought was the best solution for writing, editing and formatting blog posts offline ... Word. I have the Mac version of Microsoft Office for all the Excel spreadsheets I use, so Word is available. I have used that before, then you copy and paste into Blogger when you return online ... but it has problems with pictures.

I took this next picture not because of the trees or skies but for the first time in all the years I lived here (19+) I had not noticed the tall Sycamore tree with the bright white bark. Maybe I have and forgot but today that white tree trunk really stood out.


As I was reading about all the 16 different alternatives for Live Writer for Mac users, my thoughts turned to a new Wordpress Blog. It must be the weather, where I am stuck inside and have only a couple of choices of activity. I am always in the mood in bad weather to start a new blog and I love Wordpress templates to work with. I should have never deleted the blog I had there this year named Living with Hounds or Life with Hounds. Once you delete a blog on Wordpress dot com, you never get it back.

Looking at the weather site Intellicast, a huge storm moved south of us. The rain had stopped but I could still hear how wet it was from cars passing on the highway. The small forecast section said I was headed for damaging winds, large hail, and a possible tornado tonight. With those high winds coming from the south I am always concerned about the last 100' tall Sycamore tree that stands by the driveway.


The last 100' Sycamore tree that was pulled out of the ground like a weed in 2008, fell through the fence and was tall enough to reach the other side of the front yard. I looked at another weather site called Wunderground and saw that the next rain would be around 7pm with 44% chance of rain ... that's when I am tuning into the IU basketball game so there is a chance my Directv signal will be knocked out depending how strong the storm is.

Yet at Midnight throughout the rest of the morning into Wednesday, the 98% chance of rain and storms looks to be the time period for high damaging winds. I'd rather see them in daylight rather than after midnight.


As you see from the pictures, Sadie and Stella went outside to check the condition of the field. It looks dry but with the paws prints going across the carport floor I could see it would be too wet and muddy if we were to take a walk. While they did that I put the car cover back on the Z4, connected the bungee cord under it to each side of the cover to prevent it from blowing off tonight. I also put my chair inside so there is nothing that can blow around causing damage tonight ... just in case.


I'm sure Stella will do a little pacing tonight when the storms do start. In the past she has been pretty good and once she realizes that things are going to be okay for her, she has laid down and slept through most of the storms we have had.


I was surprised that Sadie did not give me the look or stare down telling me she wanted to go for a walk. Instead she trotted back to the house without any begging to stay outside.


It's close to lunch time for the hounds and I think I will spend the afternoon reading my two books from the library and may even look at Wordpress again and rebuild the blog I had before. It got very little traffic and I mean very little ... but I liked it because I kept the content to just two to three sentences and then 5-10 photos.

The quality of the photos were better compared to Blogger because Google will compress them once they are loaded into the blog. There were a few days it was nice just to post pictures and that was all. I thought it would work for many readers here because I think most come here to see pictures of the hounds instead of reading my rambling.

That did not prove to be the correct assumption.

Last week I was mentioning how great this weather was for February but I read my posts in February 2016 and the weather was almost identical on the same dates of the month.

Well Stella is standing beside my office chair with her head bowed to let me know she is hungry and she can't remember her last meal of 4 hours ago. Sadie is in the doorway giving me the stare that she wants to eat. I'll have to go wake Heidi up but once she knows food is involved she will be instant energy.

I hope that I DO NOT have any "post storm" pictures to post here tomorrow.

A Seattle weather day here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

May 29, 2016

"Stray" Storm Turns Into Hail

Nothing on the radar for 400 miles or more west of us here in 'the tropics". Radar shows 3 "stray" small thunderstorms in the state, one 90 miles NE, one about 60 SW and one right on top of us.

It had been sunny all day with a 10% chance of rain according to Wunderground Weather.




It was only 43 minutes after Stella decided we need to get in the house ... where it was a downpour for 7 minutes and little pebble size hail pounding our roof.

Rolling thunder at 3:30pm when we start the hound walk.


Stella didn't move from behind me during the walk ... she's afraid of thunder.


At 4:46pm it started to pour rain



2 Minutes later it started to hail




7 minutes after it started, the sun came out with a light drizzle and I had standing water.


17 minutes after it started - the sun came out



They have always said if you don't like the weather in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... wait 5 minutes and it will change for you.