Saturday, June 7, 2008

Pirate Fest and Tornadoes!

Saturday we went up to Port Washington for the Pirate Festival. It was a hot humid day that felt fabulous once we arrived lake side. After returning home and getting the boys down for a nap, Travis and I started a movie... until about 3:30 when we heard the tornado sirens going off.
Time for the news. All the weathermen were saying things like "I've never seen it this active here" and "in my 11 years here I haven't seen 2 days in a row with tornado warnings, and we may yet have one again tomorrow!" So far today it just looks like more severe thunderstorm warnings and flood and flash flood warnings.
When we first heard the sirens, there was a rotating cell (that may have produced an unconfirmed tornado already) that was projected to go right across us, but some other storm cells held it to a more southerly route. Although that cell continued to show rotation, thankfully it didn't produce any (more?) tornadoes on its path across southern Milwaukee.
We had downpour after downpour and lots of thunder and lightning, but we even got lucky with missing the hail that was reportedly popping up in many locations, some spots the news said had hail as big as baseballs! We're also thankful our sump pump has been holding up under the stress, I've heard of more than one family now who's basements were not so lucky. Travis will be off helping with some of that later today. Some nearby spots of the freeway were closed down due to too much standing water and plenty of cars were left stranded in flooded intersections. Some patches of clouds were rating as much as 11 inches/hour! All told we got somewhere between 4 and 5 inches at our house just Saturday evening alone!

On to the Pirate pictures!

Waiting for the Pirate Invasion!
Carson loves his big brother. Check out that little nuzzle!
A pirate ship float for the Sunday parade
(something tells me Pirate Fest isn't going according to plan since yesterday afternoon...)
A couple of pirates with a bird
An old pirate polishing his cannon. This cannon is the real thing, having been used from 1770-1780.
Check out the look Carson's giving the pirate!
Here's the "Pirate Ship." It's even sporting the Jolly Roger on the mast furthest from us.

3 comments:

Sherri said...

Hey, we were there too. Lynn was even on the ship coming into port for the pirate invasion. We didn't see your family there, but then it was rather chaotic with pirates everywhere...
Did you feel like you saw enough pirate women busting out their tops for your lifetime?

Anonymous said...

How fun! I told Aaron we need to enjoy the festivals this summer because it's our last summer here :) YAY!!

RaQuelle Willey said...

wow, I didn't even know they had this festival. looks like it was really neat!