July 1st 2009 Record Breaking Weather

The weather is just weird right now. I mean here its the first day in July and it never got over 69 degrees. The nights have been getting down in the 60's. The clouds were moving slow from the north and it looked like snow clouds. I cannot remember the last time that happened. So I looked it up. (don't you just love the internet?)

Hottest July 1st's on record.
1970 - 96/75
1991 - 96/72

Lowest July 1st on record.
2009 - 69/61

I could only find data back to 1948. So in the past 61 years the temperature has never gotten below 70 degrees, until today that is. The week prior to July 1st. It was up in the 90's. Then it dropped quickly, I froze, I was wearing a sweat shirt for the past 2 days.

I am a weather nut, I am the type that will stand out in a electric storm just to watch it, watch which way the storm is coming from and where its going. There are some really cool lightening bolts that come down.

Tornado's however are not my thing.

I was in one back when I was about 10 years old. It was on a church night, and all was in the fellowship room, on the second story of the church, I really dont think anyone knew it was a tornado, we just knew it was storming bad that night. My father told me that we needed to go check on the dogs and put them in the house. (the house was right next to the church as you can see in the picture below, the church is on the left and the house is behind the trees on the right.)

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He had to force the door open and then we took off, I remember the rain hitting my young face and it was stinging, I tried to shield my face with an umbrella, and that was just pointless, cause it was ripped out of my small hands. I remember walking with the wind cause it was pushing us towards the house. Once inside, we let the dogs in and they ran to the basement.

I went into the living room and the enclosed porch that was attached to the house, was no longer attached. It had been pulled away from the house by only inches. Far enough to allow a lot of rain into the house. I remember running over, to the furniture and started moving, as I am yelling to my father to come quick. We got the room cleaned out pretty quick. But what a mess the carpet was. We had to find buckets, the problem was they were all out in the garage. So I had to get pots and pans instead, and take a pot at a time to dump it out. We found out later that a tornado touched down only one block east of us. If my father and I would have left any sooner, who knows what would have happened.

Allen