June 20, 2011

Today was an eventful day for more than one reason.  One, about 3,000 people are in the process of checking into their rooms to stay at UNL for the 2011 International Thespian Festival.  I have been bombarded with questions the entire night.  The influx of questions is not entirely unwelcome (dead shifts get old after awhile), but it can be overwhelming at times.  It's especially stressful when you have online Spanish discussion homework that has to be done by midnight.  It took me four hours to do what normally takes me under an hour because I kept getting interrupted.  Fortunately, I am done with that now, which is why I actually have time to type this right now.  The nice thing about busy shifts like this, though, is that it makes time fly.  I feel like I just got here, but I'm already almost done with my shift.

Two, the weather was back to more typical Nebraska summer behavior for once.  Today there was originally only a slight chance of rain (maybe a 20 or 30% chance according to this morning's forecast), but it quickly became obvious that there was a much better chance of precipitation than that.  I ended up not being waken by storms overnight.  In fact, I don't think Lincoln got a single drop of rain last night.  However, when I woke up this morning to go to a shift and then class, I noticed that the air felt heavy and thunderstorm-ready.  When I went for a walk around 2 p.m. there was already stuff popping on radar, and there were dark, ominous clouds hovering overhead that made me nervous.  I got sprinkled on during the last half of my walk, but nothing too damaging.  Later, right before my 6 p.m. to midnight shift, I noticed that Grand Island and other parts of western and central Nebraska were getting absolutely drilled.  Grand Island had some heavy rain and hail, and there was a small tornado north of Kearney.  There was still nothing in the Lincoln area at that time.

I went to eat and then clocked in for my shift.  Around 7 p.m. it started raining cats and dogs, lightning like crazy, and we had gale force winds.  Many people were caught outside in the storm and walked into the building soaking wet.  We were in Thunderstorm Warnings and a Tornado Watch for much of the evening.  Eventually, most of the rain moved east, and I don't believe it is doing anything outside at the moment.  Unfortunately for the people of eastern Nebraska and Iowa, the huge line of red and yellow storms has currently lined itself up perfectly with the Missouri River (where the entire border is constantly in a Flood Warning).  Sucks for them.  They definitely don't need anymore rain over there.

Well, this has been a long post.  It was just the first eventful day in a a long time!  The weather has been relatively dull this year.  I'm not saying I love destructive hail and tornadoes all the time, but from time to time it makes life interesting....