The Light Show

Beaufort, NC
32 25.24 N 080 39.69 W

The NOAA weather radio did its best to scare us the other day. I had it set to be silent except when triggered by severe weather alerts. Eight times in the afternoon and evening it went off with ear piercing shrieks and whistle sounds. Each time it talked about severe thunderstorms and tornado alerts. Scary stuff. We were plenty intimidated.

We prepared for the worst. I let out 140 feet of chain to anchor in 7 feet of water. We put most electronics in the oven to protect it from lightning strikes.

In the end, the storms all missed us. They came close, but no direct hits. However, up on deck I saw a really spectacular light show. The cloud to cloud lightning flashes were almost continuous, thus illuminating the sky, the sea and everything around us. Out to sea, perhaps 20 miles away, there was plenty of cloud to ground lightning. Seeing it from such a distance isn't scary, it's just beautiful.

By the way, using the app called Weather Bug on my Droid phone was much more useful than NOAA weather radio. Weather bug showed my animated maps. I could see not only where the storms were but also their direction and speed. Also, it showed on the map regions where there were tornado alerts. That's much more useful than the radio's citation of lists of county names. Since we are transient rather than residents, we don't recognize the names of counties or towns they name on the radio.

We're at a slip at Lady's Island Marina. Today we rent a car and drive to Fort Benning to see Nick's graduation from infantry school. Sorry, no more blogs until Saturday or Sunday.