President's Day, 2012

Normally, a federal holiday for a federal retiree is not much of a day about which to blog. Yesterday, however, was, and it had nothing to do with federal, holiday, or retirement. It had to do with weather in Oklahoma City, where three of my children and a grandson live.

It started with several rapid-fire tweets from Gary England, the main weather dude in OKC. He's been there for about 469 years, I think, and shows no sign of slowing down. He's also one of the nation's premier tornado predictors - is there really such a word? - because, well, they do have some tornados in Oklahoma, as you might know. How this slight diversion ties to the main subject is this: Tornados are really bad storms and Oklahoma City had a really bad storm yesterday.

Take a look at this:

Before you ask, yes, this is a real picture of a major dust storm, taken by a TV photographer, as it approached. I had children heading south, away from Enid, Oklahoma, and children very close to the nasties. Fortunately for them - and me - none of them were caught in the storm and debris and they all made it to their home in Oklahoma City.

I read a trucker's blog about a big rig that wasn't so lucky. Somewhere on I-40 in Oklahoma City, the truck hit some debris and broke an air line, which in a commercial motor vehicle with air brakes, is not a good thing. They fixed it and continued heading west carrying their load of FedEx freight...until they got to Arizona and all the snow, ice, and traffic accidents we all heard about, including a major tie-up between a CMV hauling gun powder and a tanker hauling caustic chemicals.

Wouldn't a leak there have been fun...