Tuesday, April 6, 2010

PORT ARANSAS: WHEN THE COLD FRONT BLEW IN









Back a couple of weeks ago, when the serious cold front blew into Texas during Spring Break, it hit Port Aransas about 12:45 p.m. on that Saturday. So the family and I and Mrs. El Fisho's best friend forever (BFF), who took the above photos, were lounging on the beach in Port A watching the cold front blow in from the north. It was really a gorgeous sight to see, and I'm glad the BFF had her camera. I had once again forgotten ours.
The top photo shows the cold front blowing in, with the hard rain behind it. The wind preceeded the clouds and rain by about 15 minutes.
The two middle pictures show the further back part of the front, to our left as we were looking up the beach towards Port A proper. The front was a huge curved beast.
The bottom photo shows looking out to the Gulf of Mexico, and that the strong winds are now blowing not from the sea (as usual) but from inland TOWARDS the sea, causing the waves to be blown back quite a bit. Although the waves were still crashing, as the photo shows the wind was taking lots of the water from the top of the waves in the opposite direction of the wave's travel. If you look to the back part of the picture you see plumes of water moving away from shore, and these were huge sections of the tops of the waves being blown OFF OF THE WAVE.
Talk about the power of Mother Nature. Despite all of us having significant beach hanging out histories, none of us had ever seen anything like that, and we'd all seen spectacular and scary storms at beaches in years past.
A torrential rain that lasted several hours followed the arrival of the front. We knew it was coming, but had no idea it would be so spectacular. It was the coolest weather event I have ever seen. There was no thunder or lightning with this storm, so it was strictly wind and rain.



























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