iSTEP Tanzania

Writing from Pittsburgh, PA….

Last night Pittsburgh and the entire metropolis area was hit by a fantastic summer thunderstorm, but this storm was accompanied by funnel clouds, then tornado sightings, and finally purple on the weather map–I literally do not know if I have ever seen a furious purple color on a radar map.  About 24 hours after the storm, 1300 people are still left without power in the area.

During the storm, local news stations were claiming lightning counts reached record rates.  Literally the sky was alight for about 3 hours with bolts that lit up the sky approximately ever 30-60 seconds.  Rain came down at a furious pace, and on Forbes Avenue (the main street Carnegie Mellon is adjacent to) many drivers became stuck as their cars quickly flooded with rain.

Carnegie Mellon also experienced a decent amount of flooding.  Apparently, the basement of Newell-Simon Hall, where TechBridgeWorld has its offices, flooded about 18 inches.   Smith Hall was also closed on campus, and Wean’s basement was known to have flooded.  In classic style, the entrances to Newell-Simon and Smith were blocked with bright yellow police tape.  The yellow tape was definitely a positive deterrent for Newell-Simon, where the basement was flooded not by rain water, but sewage water instead.  It was noted that at least the rest of the flooding was gladly just that, H2O overflow.