I was reminded yesterday of why it’s so much fun to live in Texas in the springtime. (And by “fun” I mean “not fun at all.”) The day had been sunny and warm, just like any other day in June, and I wasn’t bothering to check the Weather Channel to see if that might change. Instead, I had the television tuned to the National Geographic channel and an episode of “Seconds From Disaster.” As the name implies, this show discusses past disasters and explains the research that went into uncovering the causes and reasons for said disasters. Yesterday’s episode focused on a DC-10 plane crash back in 1979. Quite a bad accident – one of the plane’s engines literally fell off the wing during take off. The narrator intoned, “if this was a design defect, it would have to be addressed on the entire fleet of DC-10s in operation.” Yeah. That’d be a pretty major defect. I prefer the engines on the planes I fly in to remain WITH the plane at all times. But it turns out it wasn’t a design defect – it was a shoddy maintenance job. Although interestingly enough, the literal loss of the engine was NOT what caused the plane to crash – apparently, even if an engine is ripped off the wing of a DC-10, it is STILL designed to fly and land safely. What ultimately caused the crash was poor pilot training, which resulted in the pilot cutting back the speed of the plane when he realized there was a problem. This, in turn, caused the plane to stall. If he’d kept the speed up, things may have turned out differently – unfortunately, he was doing exactly what he’d been trained to do. Things have changed now, of course… it’s just sad that horrible accidents have to occur before the aviation industry can realize its flaws…
But I’m getting off track… so I was watching the show about the DC-10 plane crash and pitting some cherries in the kitchen, admiring my bug-free windowsill. When all of a sudden I heard a low rumble outside – far off at first, but gaining momentum and volume until it ended in a great smashing collision. My first thought was, “it’s a DC-10 plane crash!” Seriously. I was little too wrapped up in the show. But it only took another half a second to realize it was actually thunder. Of course, this confused me, since not five minutes earlier I’d been gazing at the sunny lawn outside my insecticide-covered kitchen window. I threw away all my cherry pits and washed my hands, then walked over to my computer to check the weather. I noticed I had an email from Rick – it was a link to the satellite picture of central Texas, where big red blobs of pop-up thunderstorms threatened to devour entire towns. Where did THOSE come from???
By the time I looked at the email and checked a couple other weather sites, the rain had begun to fall. I’ve gotten quite used to the sound of a driving downpour, as it seems we’ve had so much rain this year. So when I heard the water pounding on the roof, I just sighed and waited for the satellite TV to go out. But then I heard a different sound – like someone was tossing pebbles at my windows. Uh oh. I knew that sound, too, although fortunately we don’t hear it too often – hail. I hesitantly peeked out the back window, and only saw a few marble-sized pieces scattered on the deck around the pool. Okay, marble-sized hail isn’t so bad, I thought. It’ll probably last about two minutes and then go back to rain. I walked away from the window, and noticed the satellite TV was still on. Wow. Usually it goes out before the rain even REACHES us…
And then the pebbles hitting the windows suddenly turned into something much louder. The hail was hitting the windows with loud cracking noises, and I was certain at any moment I’d hear the shatter of glass before a rush of wind and rain were driven into my house. I heard the sharp sound of hard-object-hitting-metal through the garage door in the kitchen, and with dismay realized our MDX was parked in the driveway. Venturing another peek outside the window, I saw hail pelting the surface of the pool, water splashing everywhere, broken tree branches attempting to float… the car was a lost cause. No way could I head outside in this stuff, unless I wanted to have welts on my head and arms…
After about ten minutes of assuming we’d have to replace half the windows in the house (nothing actually broke… it just sounded that way…), and marveling at the fact that the satellite TV remained on throughout the entire storm, the hail let up and I was able to open the garage door and check on the car. Sigh… my once pristine MDX is now full of little dimples, although they’re very subtle. If you didn’t know they were there, you might even miss them. It could’ve been a lot worse…
And hey – at least there were no tornadoes. Gotta love spring in Texas…
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