Storms and Such

I fell asleep last night with the TV still tuned to The Weather Channel.  I had been watching the reports of the storms that raged through Iowa, Wisconsin and other parts of the upper Midwest.  My thoughts and prayers go out to those hundreds of people who live in towns razed by the tornados and other massive storms who are injured or whose homes are gone or damaged.  Nature is sometimes not gentle.

Shortly after 3 a.m. I awoke to see and hear of even more damage and threats of vicious storms in other areas of the country.  At the time, all was quiet here.  I went back to sleep after an hour or so only to be awakened just before dawn by claps of thunder and the sound of pouring rain.   While the wind blew hard (as evidenced by small limbs and other debris in the streets), our thunderstorm was a light one.  It rained again pretty hard about 10 a.m., then the wind blew the clouds out of the way and the sun came out.   I took the photo above from my back yard about two o'clock this afternoon.  There's still some rain in the clouds but as the wind was moving them along pretty rapidly it will fall on someone else's land.

While I was outside, I couldn't help but notice that the anemometer on my in-ground weather vane was doing a merry spin.  Since I am still quite the photography novice, it took a bit of manipulation of the shutter speed on my camera, and more than a few exposures, to capture the motion to my minimal satisfaction.

The pink blurs in the background are those of my Dainty Bess rose, the first of my roses to bloom. Yes, I got some photos of those, too; blog fodder for later.

I hope you, and those you love, are safe and unscathed by this past weekend's storms.

Tomorrow is also a day.

All Is Well Here, For the Present, Anyway

We had a very bumpy, tornado/lightening/thunder/torrential rain-filled night.  The lightening display was incredible, and lasted for hours.  There was no reported damage in my town other than tree limbs down, that I've heard of, but terrible damage and several fatalities in other Arkansas communities, two of them relatively nearby.  I ask your thoughts and prayers for the families affected, especially those in Scotland, Arkansas, a small community in north central Arkansas where the fatalities occurred.


I emptied my rain gauge this morning. I don't know what the exact amount of rainfall was on my property since the gauge was full and running over. It measures approximately nine (9) inches, and was completely empty yesterday afternoon.  It's raining hard, again, but only sporadically.  The weather bureau forecasts another band of storms moving through the state during the day. I hope it's just rain, this time.


More, later.

Watching the Sky, but not Sky Watch Friday

When I arose this morning, the temperature was already at almost 70 degrees. Definitely not a good thing for December 27 in Arkansas! When I checked the weather report, it was as I suspected; we are under severe storm warnings. I stepped outside the front door a few minutes ago to see what, if anything, was going on in the heavens, and found only heavy gray clouds. They were being pushed by a strong southwesterly wind and really scudding across the sky. You'll have to imagine the movement, since while I have the capacity to make a short video on my camera, I don't have the know-how to get it into the blog (yet).

The storm warnings (actually tornado warnings) are to expire shortly. I'm hoping that they are not reissued. I don't wish for history to repeat itself; the Little Rock area was hit by a bad tornado during Christmas week a few years ago. That's not nice, Mother Nature!