Speaking of the Weather...

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Growing up in Vermont my brothers and I spent most of our time outside if the sun was up. In the summer we'd be out until well after sundown some nights, chasing fire flies and the like. Being outside a lot, we learned to pay attention to the weather.

Now in Vermont there are two types of weather which can kill you - lightning and snow. Lightning for the obvious reason, high voltage and all that, snow if there's a lot of it and it's cold enough.

Yes, there's other types of weather which can kill you, but those are out of the ordinary. The storms which swept through the state and caused heavy flooding back in 2015 spring to mind. Floods are always dangerous if you live close to a stream or a river, which we didn't, and can occur anytime you have heavy rain.

Now when I went out into the wide world back in 1975, I got to experience other types of weather which can end you, sometimes whether you're careful or not. During tech school in Denver I don't recall any crazy weather events, my experience of dangerous weather in Colorado came a few years later. Yeah, I'm talking tornadoes but that's not as big a problem along the Front Range as it is in say, Omaha. But again, that was down the road a ways.

When I got to Okinawa I got the chance to experience typhoons. Some scary sonsofbitches right there, I can tell you. Wind, lightning, flooding, heavy surf, all at the same time.

My first barracks on Okinawa was pretty run down, paint peeling off the ceiling was my first memory of my new home back in '76. But the barracks were solid affairs, concrete and steel, they held up pretty good in a storm while I was there.

When I hit the rack for the first time I thought it was kind of stiff, seems there was a plywood sheet under the mattress. Perhaps to make the bed more firm? I don't know. But I do know that in typhoon weather, that plywood was put up over my window. Just in case.

Had one buddy was a real nut. Always had to have his fan in the window. As he lived on the backside of the barracks, facing a hill, he didn't really get all the rain the rest of us would get along the front of the building. Now Okinawa is hot during the spring, summer, and fall, and humid year-round. Having a fan is a must. (What's air conditioning? Oh, that's right, when they moved us to a renovated barracks we had central air. Pretty nice I can tell you.)

One day, during a typhoon period with the wind howling outside, Larry (for that was his name, Russ probably remembers him, I think they worked together in Florida as well) called us down to his room. Seems that the wind was blowing so hard that it was causing his fan to slow down and even reverse direction.

"Ya know Larry, if it keeps doing that, the fan motor will burn out."

"Nah, it'll be fine."

Later on Larry was wandering the barracks looking for an unused fan. (Hahaha, no such thing.) Seems his fan had smoked and the only thing turning it now was the wind. Yeah, he was just a bit miffed.

Lots of rain, lots of humidity. That's what I remember about Okinawa.

When the typhoons came to town, Your Humble Scribe obeyed orders, stayed in his barracks, and gladly ate his C-rations with everyone else. (Yes, we were issued C-rations when the weather was bad enough to shut down the base. The peanut butter spread and crackers were an OAFS favorite. Didn't care for the ham and lima beans, no one did as I remember it. You can find another name for that treat here. Read all about C-Rats here.)

Weather that can kill ya. Typhoons qualify in that category. (Keeping in mind that typhoons are the western Pacific's version of a hurricane, they do tend to be bigger than an east coast hurricane. Because of the bigger ocean I guess.)

Had my first experience of tornadoes on Okinawa as well. The water spout version. We once saw (IIRC) at least four funnel clouds heading down to the sea as we watched from the loading dock of the avionics building. Only one touched down (again IIRC), but it dissipated quickly, just after it kissed the water.

Saw my next funnel cloud in Omaha, about two miles away as my neighbor and I stood in our common driveway and had a beer together. As the sirens started to go off, we downed our beers, shook hands (just in case) and headed inside.

The progeny can tell you, we spent a number of hours in the closet next to the downstairs bathroom, under the stairs. Safest place when you have no basement. All we had was each other and a battery operated radio. Scary on a couple of occasions, closest anything ever came was a half mile or so on the other side of the hill we lived on.

Never saw anything like Offutt had back in June when an EF1 and an EF2 tornado touched down in the area and damaged a number of buildings and 10 aircraft on the base itself. Not little aircraft either, 8 RC-135 birds were damaged (all four-engined jets based on the venerable Boeing 707) and two of the big E-4Bs, based on the Boeing 747 airframe. (Story here.)

RC-135s at Offutt AFB, NE
(USAF Photo by SrA Jeremy Smith)

E-4B at Offutt AFB, NE
(USAF Photo by Josh Plueger)

While we do see the occasional tornado in New England, had one touch down briefly not that many years ago here in Little Rhody, not far from Chez Sarge. But here it's mostly hurricanes and blizzards which will really work at killing you. Fortunately, those are also fairly rare.

Lightning though, scares the bejesus out of me. Always has, always will. I've had strikes come pretty close in the past, close enough to feel the heat as it were. Lightning can get you anywhere. When the rumbling starts, the Old AF Sarge makes sure that cover is close by, and I count from flash to boom as things move in.

We get quite a few thunderstorms in Little Rhody. Oddly enough, they tend to pass just to our north, and just to the south. Which is close enough for me.

Weather can be scary, especially if you're not paying attention. Mother Nature likes to pick off the foolhardy and the ignorant. So I pay attention and take no chances when the weather gets nasty.

I've had this view. Once had to fly a good two hours around a big storm marching down the east coast, also was stuck in Philly for most of a day waiting for a big system to move through.

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Beautiful, but deadly if you get too close.

Thanks, but I'll keep my distance.