Severe Weather Awareness Day 2008

This past Saturday KCBD along with the Texas Tech Student Chapter of the American Meteorological Society sponsored a Severe Weather Awareness Day at the Science Spectrum in Lubbock, TX to round out Severe Weather Awareness Week in Texas.

We brought our chase vehicles out to represent the TV station since we chase for them giving everyone a chance to see the equipment up close and ask lots of questions. We had a great time!

There many exhibits demonstrating all sorts of weather phenomena including a crazy lightning machine that scared the heck out of me when it decided to finally spark! Steve Miller, who had come down to check things out, got quite a laugh out of me jumping about 5 feet from that! It was MUCH louder than I was expecting!  Now if I can just figure out how to make one of my own! Steve got to met many of the station folks, as well as the NWS guys. We are getting him integrated well in to west Texas weather culture! LO

All of the station mets were out for the day too and we ended the day with me taking Steve for a nickel tour of the TV station and he got to see a live newscast. We later grabbed Carey Allen after he was done and had some good steak at Golden Corral!

Below our mets who I am pleased to work with when severe weather threatens our area, left to right in the black shirts are John Robison, Carey Allen, and Steve Divine.

I wrote a much more in depth article for the main website, if you want to read more and see lots more pics, you can find it here.

Written by David on March 6th, 2008 with 2 comments.
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Refinery Explosion in Big Spring, TX

This morning there was a huge explosion at the Alon Refinery in Big Spring, TX. I have been by this refinery many times. It’s about 70 miles from my house. As luck would have it, this was a Federal holiday, and only 3 workers were at the plant, otherwise it would have been busy with about 170 workers. These three were injured as was someone driving by on I-20 that was hit by debris. I-20 has been closed all day there. No one has been known to have been killed by the blast at this time.

Classes from Big Spring ISD where closed for the day as well as Howard College. The fire is under control right now and there is no threat to the City of Big Spring. People as far away as San Angelo, Tx reported hearing the blast.

That refinery produces 70,000 barrels a day. Incidentally, the fire mostly affected the area that manufactures propane and propylene. The area the produces gasoline was not affected but was shut down for safety. An interesting note is that reports across the area indicate gasoline prices shot up as much as 20 cents a gallon immediately after the news came out about the explosion.

Another lucky draw in this was that the winds were mostly calm.  A stark contrast to the weather of late when we have been experiencing many days of high winds over 45 mph and massive grass fires.  It’s shuttering to think what this would have been like had this been one of those days.  The relatively calm winds produced some wonderful pyrocumulus clouds as well.

You can see all sorts of video and more images and get the latest on this at a sister TV station for the one I chase for, KWES Newswest 9.

Written by David on February 18th, 2008 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on General News and General Weather.