As part of Lightning Safety Awareness Week, the National Weather Service Office in Lubbock would like to remind everyone of the dangers associated with lightning and provide some resources for your awareness efforts.

Lightning is a potential hazard to people outdoors and indoors and results in millions of dollars in economic losses each year. Lightning kills an average of 67 people in the United States each year, and is second only to flooding in terms of weather related fatalities. Exceeding the number of fatalities are the estimated 600-700 survivors that are left with debilitating health effects each year. West Texas sees a maximum of lightning in the late Spring and Summer months as thunderstorm develop across the southern High Plains.

Casualties are more likely to occur in open areas such as golf courses and playing fields, but lightning’s deadly strike can hit anytime during the year and in all segments of the nation. Lightning is a serious danger. With the information provided below, we hope you’ll learn more about lightning risks and how to protect yourself and your loved ones.

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.

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.

After an unusually cool summer here in west Texas, we are finally going to have some days near or above 100 degrees. For those of you reading in other parts of the country (or world) especially from up north, that might seem extreme, but it’s actually pretty common to have quite a few days in the summer hit 100 degrees or above here, most often in July and August. So far we have been seeing more temps in the mid and upper 80s rather than the mid and upper 90s.

We have not only been on the wetter side this summer, but also on the cooler side. I for one have much enjoyed this summer, as things have been rather pleasant and unusually green across the area, and even the dry land cotton is looking outstanding. The more intense rainfall we were having earlier throughout the spring and early summer has mostly tapered off, aside from a few renegade afternoon thundershowers. Even so, dewpoints have remained unusually high for this part of the country this late in the summer. Even today as I write this, dewpoints in the mid 60s are common across the area, making it feel much more like north and east Texas than typically dry west Texas, where common dewpoints in the afternoon this time of year are often well under 40F. For those less familiar, dew point is a measure of the moisture present in the atmosphere, in this case just above ground level.

Official high temperatures at the Lubbock International Airport averaged 5.4 degrees lower than normal in May, 3.3 degrees lower in June and 2.6 degrees lower in July. The highest official temperature so far this year at the airport has been 98 degrees, although that stands to be matched or broken this week. We have also passed our climatological peak for high temperatures, so the chances for days at or above 100F are slipping away.

It was over a decade and half ago in 1991 that Lubbock made it through the year without officially breaking 100 degrees. Will we have another record year this year? This week will tell! If this comes to pass, it will only be the 5th time since records have been kept that this has ever happened.

It’s interesting to note that across the area, other observation stations are reporting a similar trend of cooler and wetter than normal conditions. Looking at the nearby Childress, TX records also shows out of 31 days, only 2 days in the normal range for temps.

All of this bodes will of course for an early and more typical fall season. I’ll go ahead and go on record and say we will see an earlier than typical first frost and freeze date this year, along with a healthy, wet winter. As the clash of the titans of Summer and Winter to once again take their Fall battlegrounds, this could potentially set up a few good severe weather episodes for the southern plains, giving us a decent 2nd season. It certainly seems the moisture isn’t in any hurry to stop hanging out in the plains.

Of course of great interest to this writer, and I suspect most readers, is now will this play for next Spring and an active storm chase season. I am not a fan of long range forecasts whatsoever, other than just general trends and pattern recognitions, but you live out on the plains long enough, you do get a “gut feeling” for these things, that prove themselves more often than not. I know, not very scientific, but it works for me. Of course neither I, nor anyone else knows what is in store of us next Spring.

We came into 2007 after an extremely crappy year for chasing in 2006, that rivaled 1988. Spring 2008 will be following a more wet and cooler year on the plains, and a pretty active year for chasing. I think the southern plains will once again be active, perhaps even more later into the season than 2007 proved to be (it was great early but then shut off down south early as well). 2008 may very well see a more “normal” severe weather season for the southern part of the plains, perhaps even with Oklahoma regaining some of it’s “Tornado Capitol of the World” status back.

Mother nature always finds a way to balance things out.