Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Thunderstorm ride

Yesterday, the forecast was sunny. All day. In the afternoon, however, I saw clouds rolling in, and they were mildly worrisome. First of all, in this part of Virginia, this time of year is known for sunny days and "showers" in the evenings. These clouds weren't that foreboding but since I had biked to work, I wanted to be sure.

Weather.com told me, "No worries! You won't see any rain until 7 or 8 pm easily, if not later!" I look at the radar map, as I like to do, pretending to be a meteorologist. The current map showed some shower formation not far from here. I click on the "past map in motion," and it showed over the previous three or so hours how these clouds appeared as if from nowhere. Then I clicked the "future map in motion," which is the new thing on weather.com, and it shows (supposedly) what is to come. Well, from the instant after "now," the storms just vanished and it looked glorious. Clearly, this forecast was from the same information that stated on their Hourly Forecast was was to come.

Not trusting them, I left work to just go home and finish my calculation there. The moment I left, the rain began. Not wanting to go back into the office, since I'd have to unpack everything all over again I figured, "What's a little rain?"

Let's just say this, the next fifteen minutes were some of the worst. The rain was pouring down, but not just that, the wind was so strong (conveniently, no matter which way I turned, it was always a headwind) that I was getting pelted in the face with rain, and it required three times as much effort to just go forward at all, much less at a decent pace. The number of (stupid) cars on the road caused me to have to ride through puddle drenching my shoes and socks. The only piece of clothing that wasn't wet when I got home was...oh wait, no, even my boxers were soaked through. The only solace was that Corbett got caught in it too, so we could commisserate.

The forecast is the same this morning as it was yesterday. So I biked to work, since it's so sunny and beautiful out! I am certain it won't happen again.

by Topher at 10:23 AM |