Sunny Day Hail Storm Confirms Everything Is Upside Down

Bright sunshine amid falling hail near Portand, Oregon last week
You can see it better within the video in this post. 

You can hear the woman's voice in this brief video at the bottom of this post.

Yes, everything's normal. We're all under quarantine. It's a beautiful blue sky, sunny day. And it's hailing. Pretty hard.

That's the view in the video, so yeah, things are strange.

Actually, in terms of weather, it was strange, but very, very explainable.

Yes, there were blue skies overhead, but the air was unstable over Portland, Oregon on March 31, when the video was taken. That produced a lot of popcorn type showers in the Portland area.  The showers had gaps of blue sky between them. It was a very changeable day.

There was cold air just above the Earth's surface, so it was easy for hail to form. In the video, one of these shower clouds with hail must have just passed nearby, flinging handfuls of hail at this hapless homeowner.

The hailstones weren't big at all, as you can see, and caused little if any damage.

Still fun to watch in these topsy-turvy times. Here it is:

Two Tornadoes In Two Weird Places

Tornado the other day in Taiwan

Videos have emerged of two separate tornadoes in the past couple of days, which in and of itself isn't weird. Tornadoes are fairly common in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere summer.

It's just where these two happened: One was in Taiwan. The other was in Portland, Oregon.

Tornadoes are not unheard of in either location. However, people are also not used to them in either place.

You can tell that by the videos at the bottom of this post. People stayed outside filming the tornadoes when they were right on top of them. They should have been hiding indoors, preferably in a basement.

The amateur videographers all survived, which is great. I present the videos with mixed emotions, because I don't want to encourage people to go out in dangerous conditions and shoot videos. But still, they're pretty cool.

Tornado damage in Portland, Oregon. 

The tornado in southern Taiwan injured two people, cut power to about 7,400 others and caused quite a bit of structural damage.

The Portland, Oregon tornado was fortunately weak. It had peak winds of 80 mph, was only 40 yards wide and had a path length of 1.6 miles. It caused roof damage to a couple houses and knocked down several trees.

It was the fifth tornado in records dating back to 1904 of hit within Portland city limits, says the National Weather Service.

First up: A compilation video of the Taiwan tornado. Still surprised only two people were hurt, given how many people were too close to flying debris:



Next video is the funnel almost directly overhead of the people shooting the video in Portland, Oregon. They can't believe there's actually a tornado in Portland. Then they realize that it has actually touched down. Still, they stay outside. Luckily no harm done to them:

Snow Day At Oregon Zoo Was A Pleasure For The Animals

Nora the Polar Bear enjoys a foot of new snow at the Oregon
Zoo in Portland this past week.

During Portland, Oregon's epic snowstorm last week, one of the places that had to close to the public was the Oregon Zoo. 

The roads were just too dangerous, and the zoo had too much work to do digging out from a foot of snow to welcome humans.

However, as the humans of Portland grumbled over nearly impassable roads, snapped power lines and broken branches, the animals at the zoo had a BLAST of a snow day.

Here's a wonderful video from the Oregon Zoo showing polar bears, sea otters, seals and an Asian elephant just loving winter.  (Staffers at the Oregon Zoo could NOT resist filming all these escapades.)

Next time I complain about having to scrape ice off my car, I'll try to remember to have fun like the guys in this video: