I wrote last time how the cicadas had for three days presaged the arrival of heavy rain. We had another portent of woe the other day with the return of the green clouds. These only rarely show themselves, but are reliable indicators of a severe storm about to hit the city, nearly always with ridiculously large hailstones and torrential rain dumped in an alarming short period of time. This happened last Thursday.
I was at work when the first of the storms arrived, and these were worrying enough, but then we saw on the weather radar two more severe storms converging on the city, one from the north-west and one from the south-west, looking to collide just a short distance west of where I was located. It was shortly before their arrival that people all over the city and points further north saw the green clouds. I didn't see them myself, the ominous portent being on wrong side of the building from me, but it was obvious from just a glance out the window that the storm was going to be a bad one. Sure enough, very quickly the two storm fronts merged, the sky grew alarmingly dark and then torrential rain came, quickly followed by thunderous, marble-sized hail. We have a spectrum analyser display in the control room where I work which shows the strength of the signal being received by our main satellite dish on the roof. In heavy rain, this level can fall dangerously low, on very rare occasions being reduced to zero and shutting off all contact with the satellite. This I saw happen on this occasion, but in reality the sound level of the rain and hail had increased to the point where I knew anyhow without the need to look at technology that we were in a spot of bother. That's also when the hail turned from marble to golf-ball size. I abandoned my work post briefly to get a closer look at the hail which is when for a few moments it even threw down some billiard ball-sized stones, which thundered into the roof and surrounds and threatened to do serious damage. This it evidently did, with car windscreens smashed, outdoor furniture destroyed and even paving stones cracked open by the stuff. Fortunately, our home a little to the north of the city was spared the worst of the hail, but at work our satellite system, as indicated by the spectrum analyser, was indeed knocked out of commission, and which took an engineer and a team of technicians four hours to jury-rig a work-around for.
Meteorologists struggle to fully understand how and why the mysterious green clouds form, but perhaps the most plausible explanation has to do with how ice-laden storm clouds filter out sunlight, with only green wavelengths getting through, similar to that of green-tinged icebergs, perhaps. Whatever the scientific explanation, there's little doubt that they are accurate predictors of severe hail, wind and rain to come. Unfortunately, the length of time given in warning is very short, but enough, at least, to get under cover and escape the potentially lethal hail.
But that was last week. It's now Christmas Day, and I'm sorry to say that I have no further running to report. This has been in small part due to the storms; more especially due to a reoccurrence of the plantar fasciosis, and as well of course just the general mayhem that is pre-Christmas chaos. The return of the sore left foot had me perplexed and more than a little annoyed until I finally realised that by mistake I had been wearing my old orthotics for three consecutive days. Switching back to my new ones made an almost immediate improvement, and so I am confident that I should be back in running kit very soon.
That is, if Christmas indulgence doesn't get in the way first, of course.
[
Showing the weather radar image of the converging storms, and the green clouds seen at the time.]
Diddly December
