Where is my government-mandated ration of global warming?

... but this Cubanita wonders if I need to produce the rationing book from the tropical gulag in order to receive my minimal dose of warmer temps...hey, whatever it takes, if we are being blinded and frozen by snow and record low temperatures in 1/3 of the United States!

Since we're in the topic, I wanted to share drillanwr's superb take on this global-warming-that-in-winter-is-called-climate change, over there at Babalu Blog.

Enjoy! After all, I'll have a balmy 35 F ovah here today.

PS-Wholeheartedly dedicated to a scientist-inquiring mind... while this Caribbean girl in Colorado daydreams with sun, salty water and white sands...  :)

And, after the tornado alert went off...

While people born and raised here were saying: "Heck, these things happen in Kansas, not in our backyards!".

While people entendida en la materia were saying yesterday there was not the right temperature, not the usual time of the day, not the usual pressure to see an EF 3 or 4 tornado, less likely to happen int he front range, where the Rockies usually protect us from these things...

While this community started to see the damages of the one mile wide tornado like this.

While a second alert of a tornado could hit West Greeley around 4:30 p.m. (which means it could hit, literally, our neighborhood) was dismissed.

After all this happened half a mile from our house, after seeing in the late news that the path of the tornado barely missed our neighborhood, after learning from neighbors that they saw the tornado from their second floor windows, expecting that thing to move two inches and head directly towards us...

These Cubans over here, more used to deal with ciclones than with tornadoes, needed to replenish these minds and bodies after such a hell of a scare.

Therefore, we ran to the grocery store as soon as the alert went off, and got this:

Two seconds after the first buchito, we were ready pa'lo que sea, again.

Now, seriously, we are being told we have to keep watching the skies this afternoon, between 1 and 4:30 p.m.

And I keep praying to be lucky enough, again.

Tornado hit; save but still shaking

It's been quite a day over here, in what it's always supposed to be colorful Colorado.

We had seven tornados hit in this area, around lunchtime. And Jeez!! we're still shaking!

The biggest one, unofficially estimated being an F-3 category, we could say took a very nice walk around our neighborhood and while spared us from the destruction, other towns close by were merciless hit.

It been reported that the monster was one mile wide. Go figure!

All that happening while MDH and I were at work, in another town 45 minutes north, and Mami and my kiddo at home.

We were both locked up in emergency mode; I work in a hospital, he works in a school. And there was no power at home, so neither of us were able to talked to my Mom for the longest couple of hours in my whole life.

I can not tell how many things were racing through my mind.

But we thanked God for being so lucky. And for the caring neighbor that called my Mom just on time to suddenly stop Nicolás lunch and run down to the basement. She says the poor kid was like, "Hey! what's up with you, I haven't finished my frijoles negros!".

First, it hit in two small towns (Gilcrest and Milliken) a mile south of our neighborhood. Then, instead of keeping its way straight north, right where we are, it moved west and hit a business area called Promontory Park, where the State Farm and JB Swift corporate offices are.

Then it went above and beyond. It hit Windsor, a 16,000 people town, con ensañamiento y alevosía. The town is almost destroyed. There are 100 injured.

The hail that fell around here, folks, was the size of baseball and golf balls.

And I am definitively no kidding bout it.

One hundred and something children were miraculously saved in Windsor when they were quickly rushed by the teachers to a bank across the street. The kiddos were packed up in the bank's vault. A few seconds later, the daycare building was completely lifted from the ground.

One man was killed in a RV park that is like, two minutes driving from our house.

Thousands of people are homeless, have sought protection in shelters, there are more than 16,000 without electricity, there are natural gas leaks... even the cargo trains were lifted from the railroad.

Our county, Weld, has been declared an area of national disaster. And the alert lasted until 8 p.m., which seemed to be endless.

Nevertheless, we're now breathing peacefully because we're saved. It was hard to see in the news the places and the faces that you are familiar with, from the gas station, the grocery store and the parks, crying and staring at their destroyed homes.

But, as one neighboord said on TV, "It's good that here nobody got killed. And the houses torn down? Well, that what bulldozers are for".

Hoy nacimos de nuevo. I am so damned positive sure of that!

Sources: The Greeley Tribune & FOX 31 Channel News