Today: Macrobursting with excitement.

Fortunately for everyone in the Boston metro area, I am not a paid weatherperson.  In times such as last night, I would be a complete loose canon on air.  Pea sized hail, everyone!  Macrobursts!  Tornadic activity! Then again, I have heard some doozies during WBZ’s live coverage of the tornado warning in western Mass… so maybe I am actually very well suited to be a weatherlady. I’ve got the jazzy outfits, after all.

I know there’s nothing funny about dramatic weather systems, especially when lives hang in peril, but I found myself laughing like a hyena last night, if a hyena could watch television.  A few of the highlights:

• “Stay out of barns and abandoned houses…” Tornado warning aside, this is just plain ol’ good advice.  I mean, why at 7:30 in the evening would you be lurking in an abandoned house?  I get the barn thing– if you’re a farmer or an equestrian– but an abandoned house?
• “…the bathroom is really safe, because you’re surrounded by pipes.  Lead pipes.  Well, not lead pipes, but metal pipes.” Lead pipes? Perhaps this weatherman was playing a friendly game of Clue before the tornado threatened to touch down.  Forget a possible tornado, now we have to worry about being vulnerable to lead poisoning every time we go to the bathroom.
• “Now is not a good time to go out in the yard and look for things.” This brilliant caution from a MEMA representative got me thinking about what kinds of things people might look for in their own yards, in the dark.  Their dog?  Their children?  Maybe they have one of those metal detector things?  A buried time capsule? If this broadcast was tailored specifically to my dad, it would have sounded more like, “Now is not a good time to go out and putter around in the yard.”
• “The Doppler Radar is a huuuuge tool.  A huge asset.” This seems like a good note to end on.

We took Clark out for his last walk of the evening a bit earlier than usual (I didn’t want him to get sucked into a tornado, obvi), just in time to see some of the most amazing lightning imaginable.  I grabbed my camera and did the least safe thing one could do in an electrical storm, and headed straight for the roof.  Here’s what I captured (no, it’s not an animal):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x3UMf73IuI&hl=en_US&fs=1]

I tweeted (oh, the magic of Twitter!) that little video, and it ended up on My Fox Boston 25 and the opening credits and weather segments of WBZ’s 11 o’clock news.  So, I sort of am a weatherlady.  Just without the microphone.  And access to millions of viewers.

Also On Tap for Today:

• Clark has his practice round for the AKC Canine Good Citizen test, which is a prerequisite to being certified as a therapy dog 🙂
• All sweet, no heat: 25 no-bake dessert recipes
• On this day in history… moon walk!

Do you get caught up in weather hysteria?