The Rarity

It was all about the rare occurrences last night and today.  Two were weather related and one, well not so much.  But this blog about weather can't always be weather 24/7 so let's start with the non-weather related rarity first.

Mike, my co-worker and I talk often during the course of an 8+ hour day.  Many times it's about work and other times it is about random musings of everyday life.  Well yesterday, somehow we got onto the topic of work clothes.  Mike dresses appropriately for work but would probably not pass as business professional.  Over the course of the past 6 months he has lost around 45 pounds.  Needless to say the few work clothes he wears are starting to drape his much narrower frame.  Knowing he will surely be searching for new digs, we got to talking about what he should be looking for.  Perhaps in my excitement, as I do enjoy shopping for nice clothing, I randomly threw out the idea that Wednesday should be Tie Day.  Like anything planned for the future, he wrote it down on a sticky note and stuck it to a pack of gum.  Hmmm.  I wasn't expecting that.  He normally doesn't dress up too much and I didn't think he would be keen on the idea.  After all, in all my time working, I've never seen any guy (all three of us) wear a tie to work.  And the dress of the rest of the office area leaves much to be desired.  So I put it in my memory bank and moved on.

I arrived at work early today with tie in hand.  Literally.  I didn't want to create a commotion if Mike didn't take my idea seriously.  One hour later Mike arrived and gave me a glance.  One of those, we don't have to say anything to know what is going on.  He raised his arm and sure enough, he had brought in a tie.  At that moment we both put it on and let the day begin.  It probably didn't take more than a few minutes before you could actually hear the reaction.  And what a reaction we got.  Anything from the office rumor mill that we had interviews or the simple what was going on?  Then it changed to, "You guys look good", "Wow", "Did you guys do this on your own?", "Can we expect to see this from now on?"  It almost never stopped.  We even had a few onlookers come down the aisle just to see us.  After discussing a work item at a lady's desk late in the day, I probably got the best response of all.   

"You look very nice by the way," she said, having earlier been one of the onlookers that gave us a nod of approval.  "You always dress well, but this is very good for Mike.  She continued with how she liked the tie look and how it made us more professional, then also wondered if we would mention something to the other guys.

In the passing Tie Day comment from the day before, I hadn't said anything to the now two other guys.  So I left her desk and explained to both of them why we had done it and should we do it again, we will let them know so that we all wear ties.

I also passed the word on to Mike about the comments.  Throughout the day the only reasonable explanation for the apparent completely mind-boggling event was that it was just a very random comment that we both went for.  And we followed it with a maybe we will make this a weekly event.  Except by the end of the day it became something more.  Especially for Mike.  A few minutes after I passed on the kind words, Mike got up and came to my desk.  I think it hit him.  The man who seldom wore anything other than a dress short sleeve shirt and the same pair of khaki pants said we should eventually make this any every day thing.  The feeling was different.  It was professional.  We even used the slogan, Respect the Tie.  He talked about getting noticed, pay increases or potential promotions.  Bingo!  By George I think we've got something here. 

Now our clothing conversation was about where should he go to buy ties this weekend to add to his collection of one.    
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Back to the weather... I caught what has to be an oddity last night as I was meandering through the NOAA watches in the United States.  I will throw a screen grab up here before continuing so you can have a look for yourself.

If you notice we have central to northern California in this map.  If you read the watches and warnings on the right side, it shouldn't be hard to see what has to be an extremely rare event.  South of Redding, there is a tornado warning a few miles away from a winter storm warning.  I don't think you see that anywhere.  Add the fact this is California and this might be one for the books.  The state averages 5 tornadoes a year.

I also captured the radar from the Weather Channel of the rotating storm heading towards the mountain snow.

**For the record, there was no actual tornado.  In fact, this warning box probably didn't even last ten minutes.  I just happened to catch it, capture it and post it.

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And then today another truly odd event.  A tornado went through Philadelphia.  Even though it was rated the lowest on the Fujita scale with winds between 65 and 85 mph, the storm still managed to do damage which is typical in an urban environment.

This is a photo of damage taken from the ABC 6 helicopter in northeast Philadelphia

And for those looking to know where abouts in Philadelphia the storm hit, I have added a map.