I am a Weather Geek

I am very interested in the weather lately. I don't remember being all that interested in weather when I was a child. Unless it was raining when I wanted to be outside--then I certainly noticed. Weather was something that just was, like Walter Kronkite.

But as I got older and moved to Texas, weather started to matter. I can remember being fascinated one day because I could see it raining way off in the distance. Because buildings seem to unfurl from the center of San Antonio like a rug, there's no tall buildings in my way. I can see what is coming, weather-wise. If you look outside your window and there's a black wall of clouds rolling in, it's kind of hard to miss. I like that.

I used to just watch the weather everyday, but the internet has allowed me 24 hour access to weather information. Hurricane season is especially interesting to me, and I love checking out the tropical waves rolling off the coast of Africa. I try to guess which ones will become hurricanes. That sounds much geekier typed out than it did in my head. But my husband encourages my minor weather obsession, because I tell him when he needs to turn off all the computers so they won't get fried during a storm.

Then I found this extremely cool website, the National Hurricane Situation Page. It's my new all time favorite website that I visit every day. The company that offers this site also does emergency situation pages for emergency management, and that is how the page is set up. Go check it out.

Right now, Texas is in a drought and a heat wave, so the weather pages have been kind of boring. But I am hopeful that soon I will see green or yellow on the radar map, indicating mild to moderate rain. I don't want to see red or fuschia, because that would mean bad storms. And no rotating circles, indicating possible tornadoes. Just pleasant, mild, happy, green or yellow. Rain. That's all I am looking for on the weather websites these days. And maybe I keep visiting those pages hoping that they will tell me something new.