What’s the difference between a cloud full of rain and one full of hail?

Can you tell when and where a tornado is most likely to form?

Is there a website that forecasts river flooding?

Get answers to those and other questions about Hill Country weather hazards Saturday when Bob Rose, meteorologist for the Lower Colorado River Authority, comes to Blanco County.

Rose will be the speaker at the Blanco County Disaster Response Group meeting at 9:30 Saturday morning in the Blanco United Methodist Church.

Many Blanco County residents were certain last May’s windstorm included tornadoes because of the severity of the damage done and the way trees appeared to have been twisted apart. But as Rose will explain, straight-line winds can twist trees in half, too. He’ll tell us how to look at damage and tell which was caused by a tornado.

He’ll outline the differences between severe storms and those not quite classified as severe. Almost any hail storm is severe to the person caught out in it, but there is a technical difference to weather professionals.

We’re all familiar with the Saffir-Simpson Scale that classifies hurricanes by category, but do you know the Beaufort Scale for windstorms and the newly modified Fujita Scale for tornadoes? And exactly what does “flood stage” on a river tell us?

Speaking of hurricanes, those are coastal concerns, not something we worry about this far inland, right? Wrong. In fact, we’re more likely to be killed in a hurricane in Blanco County than if we lived on the coast. Rose can explain why that is true and how we easily can avoid becoming such a victim.

He’ll have all that and more at the meeting in Blanco Saturday morning. The discussion is free and open to everyone.

For more information call JoAnn Routh at 868-7414.