This early heat wave – if it was this much warmer than normal during the summer, that’s surely what it would be called – has resulted in early flowering of almost everything, including some plants that shouldn’t even be flowering until late April.  As well, most trees have started leafing out and the hardwood portions of the local forests have started turning green.

The following video from our yard  captures just a small part of this strange season in Arkansas.  For this video, I didn’t add any music, just natural back ground sounds from our yard.

How are the seasons progressing where you are?

If I were to post a photo a day – or even 5 a day –  it would take quite a while just to share those that I have selected for posting.

By putting together a video, I can share a large number at once – and create a video library that we can view on a TV screen.  The original of the video below is higher definition than what I uploaded to YouTube.

The photos, in the sequence that they appear:

1. Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, September 2009
2. Menor’s cabin and store, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, September 20, 2007
3. Canton Lake, Oklahoma, August 29, 2009
4. Canyonlands national Park, September 23, 2007
5. Pronghorn, Custer State Park, South Dakota, August 22, 2007
6. Wild burro, Custer State Park, South Dakota, August 22, 2007
7. Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, March, 2011
8. Devil’s Tower National Monument, August 27, 2007
9. Devil’s Tower National Monument, August 28, 2007
10. Texas Interstate HighwayI40, eastbound rest west of Alenreed
11. Devil’s Tower National Monument, August, 2007
12. Cottonwood Tree, Lake Ogallala, Nebraska, July 8, 2010
13. Clouds, Lake Ogallala, Nebraska, July 8, 2010
14. Lewistown, Montana, August 30, 2007
15. Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, September 14, 2009
16. Nuthatch
17. Ouray, Colorado, September 2010
18. Rest are at Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge and Kansas Highway 52
19. Moraine Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, 2009
20. Rocky Mountain National park, somewhere trail to Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, & Emerald Lake, 2009
21. Pea Ridge National military Park, Northwest Arkansas, July 15, 2011
22. Abyss Pool, West Thumb, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, September 12, 2007
23. Delicate Arch, Arches National Park, Utah, September 24, 2007
24. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Visitor Center, Colorado, 2009
25. Garvan Woodland Gardens, Hot Springs, Arkansas, April 13, 2010
26. Entrance to Yellowstone National Park, Gardiner, Montana, September 13, 2007

The music,  Improvisation On Friday… by Alex, is licensed under a Attribution (3.0).

Late yesterday afternoon, while I was at work in the simulator, Karen texted that our over 20 year old air conditioner (heat pump) had stopped working.

We ended up spending the night in the motorhome as the house was warmer than we like for sleeping.  I didn’t get off until almost 10 P.M. and Karen had the motorhome all set up when I got home, except for connecting the water.  The plumbing was still “winterized” with no water in any of the supply lines and I wanted to be home when the lines were filled.

With the current weather, it’s not a good time to be without cooling

The country is in the grips of a pretty widespread heat wave.  The orange on the map is a heat advisory, which is what we are in – “dangerous heat stress conditions…” during the afternoon and early evening hours.  The purple area is a excessive heat warning. “A prolong period of dangerously hot temperatures will occur.  The combination of hot temperatures and high humidity will create a dangerous situation in which heat illnesses are likely.”

To the east, Tropical Storm Bret is expected to stay out to sea and will provide no relief of any kind for the heat.

Fortunately, the service tech from the heating and air company showed up about 9 A.M. The problem was a fan motor and they had a replacement on the truck.  Replacing it and checking the refrigerant pressure took less than a half hour.  Now the house is cool and the air conditioner is cycling on and off periodically.

No relief in the near term:

Did a little bit of experimenting today with time lapse photography.  This short video was shot off our front deck this afternoon.  It actually consists of 500 photos.  The camera was on a tripod and programmed to take one photo every 5 seconds.  In Windows Live Movie Maker, I set the duration for each photo to .05 seconds.  The audio is from YouTube audio swap, which has a wide variety of audio that has been made available to apply to uploaded videos.

The weather today was atrocious.  I know that I said I’d much rather have the heat and humidity than the storms we were getting a couple of months ago, but this is more than I asked for.  Today was 101.9° on our porch.  Down in town it was 105° – we’re always cooler up here in the warmer months.

If I wasn’t working this contracts we’d be heading to cooler climate – Colorado, Wyoming, somewhere cooler than here.

We had a bout with severe weather two years ago today.  Debris from trees is flying horizontal in this picture.  Shortly after this picture was taken, the large tree across the road went down.

This year, after the threat of severe weather continuous for long periods in April and May, it has turned hot and muggy – about normal for this time of year.

We have somewhere in excess of 8 inches right now. Other areas got a lot more snow than we did.

It should all melt over the weekend as we have warmer temperatures on the way.

I got my class out of the way early today because of the impending/ongoing inclement weather and came home before noon.

Update — 2/2/2011:  We fared better than expected – no ice and just a trace of snow.  We just got the cold arctic air – 13° at 8 AM.

————————————–

Things have certainly changed in just a couple of days. Fortunately, we’ve had some warning, so have been able to make some preparations, just in case the storm is worse than predicted.

Even, though it’s raining for now, we’re in a winter storm warning, along with a significant part of the country.  Areas north of us and not too terribly far away are in a blizzard warning.

We’re hoping for snow and not ice.  Earlier today, the forecast was for a .2 to .4 inch coating of ice on exposed surface – tree branches, power lines, etc..

Fortunately, the forecast has changed to a thin layer of ice before the precipitation turns over to snow.

The temperature is currently above freezing.

Unfortunately, this monster storm is going to hit a lot of places hard.  Some forecasters are calling it a storm of historic proportions.

We lucked out and the worst of the storm went south of us.  I hear it snarled traffic near Little Rock into a multi-hour backup with some people stuck in their vehicles overnight.  This is the same southern storm that is hitting the east and may turn into a nor’easter for New England.

Top picture is with flash – bottom is with camera on a tripod using HDR feature of my camera.

Though we hadn’t really talked about, Karen and I had been looking forward to the day when we could get a newer car.  The 2004 CR-V was what Karen primarily drove and what we took, most of the time, if we were going somewhere together.

It also just happened to be the car we tow behind our motorhome.

However, it was 7 years old, with over 130,000 miles on it.  Though it has been extremely reliable, with that high of mileage, it’s getting closer and closer to the point where I don’t like for drive very far away – and, when I’m working, she periodically goes to see her mom, who lives about 2 1/2 hours from here.

The time was approaching for a new car, but we figured it would be a year or so away.

Then we had the December 26th car accident….

2010 Honda CR-V.

And, of course, we’ll be able to tow it behind our motorhome.

(continued from Our accident)

I remember Karen talking to one of the EMTs like she knew him.  It turned out she did – sort of.

I think the encounter went something like this:

Karen immediately recognized one of the EMTs when she saw him through the windshield as they were coming around the front of the car.

As they started checking her over, she asked, “Are you Larry?”

Somewhat surprised, he said that he was.  When Karen told him, “I know your wife, Vivian,” he asked how she knew her.

Karen replied, “Blogging, email, quilting.”

He responded with another question, “Are you C.J. or Karen?”

Karen, C.J., and Vivian had been commenting on each others blogs for quite some time.  Last year, they met for lunch and had arranged to do it again this week – tomorrow, in fact.  Karen recognized Larry because Vivian had just posted a photo of him making Christmas breakfast.

On her blog, Karen says, “– it felt really reassuring to me even though I had never met him.  It was like I knew I was in good hands.”

———-

Karen is getting around a lot better today.  Her chest still hurts a lot and she has pains all over, kind of like the all over pains you get from the flu, except she doesn’t have the flu.

Yesterday, I went to the wrecker yard and got all of our stuff out of the car.  It’s seven years old and I’d be very surprised if it could be fixed for the approximate $5,000 the car is worth on Kelly Blue Book.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the insurance information for the driver of the other car.  It’ll be in the police report, which my insurance company is supposed to obtain.  The other driver was cited by the police officer which establishes fault for the insurance purposes.

This car was the one we towed behind our motor home, so if it’s totaled, we’ll have make sure to get a replacement that can be towed.

“The coast ain’t clear, __-___”

If I had just a moment and could turn back the clock, that’s what I’d tell the person that waved the kid through.

It’s what I would tell the kid, too.

We had just seen “True Grit” at a new theater that just opened about an hour’s drive from home. On the way home, we decided to go ten miles out of the way to go out to eat.

When it happened, we were driving on a road that  is two lanes in each direction with a center turning lane.

We had just gone through a traffic light as it turned yellow. The next light had just turned green and the cars stopped there had started to move.  We were in the southbound lane next to the turning lane and there were fewer cars ahead of us than there were in the other southbound lane.

Just after we made it through the light that had turned yellow, a car that I hadn’t seen darted through a gap in the other lane of traffic.

They had been waved through by a driver in that lane.

“The coast ain’t clear, __-___s”

We were about three blocks from the restaurant we had decided to go to.

I hit the brakes and thought that we just might make it – but realized, just before impact, that we weren’t going to.

We hit hard, but not so hard that the air bags deployed.  The impact moved us a little sideways, so that the front, driver side tire was over the yellow line of the turning lane.

Shortly after the impact, the kid backed his car back into the drive of the convenience store, clearing one lane of traffic. The __-___ driver that had waved the kid through didn’t even stop to see if anyone was hurt.  The accident happened right in front of their vehicle, but they just drove off.

Our car wasn’t going any place under it’s own power.

“My chest hurts.”

Karen still had her seatbelt on.
_____________

Karen’s brother brought us home after she was released from the Emergency Room.

Karen is still hurting, but nothing is broken – according to the x-rays – and her heart is fine.  She got a shot for pain at the Emergency Room and got a prescription for the same medication – something that doesn’t cause nausea.

I’m fine – no pains that I can attribute to the accident. Tomorrow may be a different story.

The car is 6 years old with quite a lot of mileage on it.  It’s probably totaled. The cost of repair will probably be more than the value of the car.

Last evening was one of those interesting severe weather evenings.

We knew that storms were approaching and I had just seen that there was a tornado warning for our area, but it looked like the storm cell was going to pass south and east of us.

Then our phones started ringing – all three of them.

We’re subscribed to a severe weather warning service from one of the Arkansas television stations.  It calls us when there is a tornado warning for our area.  It is a lot more specific than the National Weather Service warnings.

It was time to head for the storm shelter.

We only stayed down there for about ten minutes.  We waited until we could tell that the intensity of the thunder and lightning was dropping.

Some areas got hit pretty hard, from what we’ve gathered so far.  One of the tornadoes had gone very near the Little Rock airport and they had to shutdown operations for a while.  Fortunately, our daughter, who had been in Dallas for a week on business, had been on a plane that landed before the severe weather got to the Little Rock area.

Our forecast for today includes the possibility of severe weather, but it’s much less likely than yesterday.

Here’s a short video from my new phone of some of this morning’s rain.

This is a day at work  — a week — that’s hard to rearrange and/or reschedule.

It wasn’t supposed to do this until later in the day… but at 4:30 AM we already had a bit of white stuff.

… and road conditions are already deteriorating (blue is snow covered, green is slush).

The Arctic Oscillation has become strongly negative again.

We’ve been watching this storm system move our way all week – and we’ve been getting ready for it.

Yesterday, the weather forecast was that we could get as a .75 inch coating of ice on trees and power lines – enough ice to be disastrous.

Fortunately, though, the ice here didn’t get more than a quarter of an inch. Fortunately, the freezing rain changed to sleet and, later, snow.

It was enough, though, that we didn’t venture out all day – no need.  We’ve got about 4 inches of snow on top of the ice.

We were ready, though, just in case.

One of the first things I did was to move the motorhome between the house and the shop.  The area where it is normally parked is next to and under several large pines.  After our close call last year, when an ice storm dropped branches, power lines and even whole trees not too far north of us, we decided that we would move it to a safer location if another ice storm was forecast for our area.

We also made sure we had enough groceries, which we did.

Just in case we lost power like we did last year, I had topped off the fuel tank in the motorhome.  I also moved our other smaller generator up to the front porch and made sure I found the cords for running power to the refrigerator, fireplace blower, computers and TV.

Despite the winter weather we’ve had this year, we haven’t lost power this season – yet!

The thermometer has not gotten above freezing for over a week.

While we get snow here almost every year, it’s usually melted within 2 or 3 days and, even if we get as much as a foot like we did 2 years ago, it’s gone within a week.

A week ago we had a trace of snow, not even enough to measure.  It’s been so cold that some of that trace of snow is still on the ground in areas that are shaded all day long this time of year.

I’m not complaining.  We’ve lived in colder places.  One winter in the 70s, when we lived in a high mountain desert town in Idaho, it didn’t get above 0°F for a month and was below -20°F for a week.

And, in the almost 30 years we’ve here, we’ve had had other long cold periods.

But, that was then, and this is now.

Brrrrr!

It’s a crinum!

Back in the 90s, a friend who was quite a scavenger had rescued plants from an old yard. I don’t know what the plans were for the yard, but the old bulbs and shrubs had to go.

She also ended up with a  huge bulb mass that she carted around to various nurseries, trying to find out what it was.  This was back before most people had access to the internet, but one place did say they thought it was in the amaryllis famil.

When she split it up, she gave some to us, though we weren’t sure what we would get out of it.

We got crinums.

Crinums are a southern classic and a favorite passalong plant, according to The Southern Living Garden Book. Seldom seen in newer housing areas, they are now found in old home site, country gardens and in cemeteries. Needing little care, “they tolerate adversity so well that some say no crinum has ever died.”

Old bulbs may weigh as much as 40 pounds. They should be divided infrequently as, once disturbed, they may not bloom the first year after planting.

I don’t think you’ll be able to find these at many home supply centers or garden centers.

day 16

This firewood is all from last week's storm. There's still a little bit to be cut up yet.

One of many lillies in our yard.

Another lilly picture.

This rose plant has been in our yard "forever"

This hole in the ground is where the bottom of a broken section of pine trunk hit. It had broken off about 25 - 30 feet in the air and, based on annual rings, was 33 years old at the location where the trunk broke during last week's storm.

All that's left to clean up of the broken section of pine that broke.

day 14

First of all, we’re pretty much back to normal here.  We got power back night before last, with it being off somewhere over 30 hours.  We lost water pressure some time on Saturday afternoon when we went to Little Rock.  Yesterday evening, we started getting water back after 8 PM — just a trickle at first as the whole system in our area had to fill and pressurize.

Even though we live in the country, we are on a public water supply system.  The system serves parts of three counties.  We signed up for it when it first went in back in the 80s.  We had been having problems with our well pump and the water had a lot of minerals, including iron which tended to stain things.  When we went on public water,  we had talked about installing a new pump to make the well available as a backup.  However, I had already pulled the pump once and replaced it and every time I’ve thought about doing it again, I soon forgot about it.  Since we’ve only lost water pressure once in over 20 years, it’s not been an issue.

Earlier, we discovered another problem caused by the storm.  The local television stations are coming in fine over the satellite receiver.  However, virtually nothing else is.  I did a little trouble shooting and it looks like the dish must have moved a little bit.  I’m planning to go up on the roof tomorrow morning before it gets too hot and “re-point” the dish.  While I’m at it, I’ll try to get a really strong signal from both of the satellites we receive programming on.  After I moved the dish up to the roof last year, the receiver seemed to be more susceptible to the signal getting dropped during storms than it used to be.

Yesterday, before we got water back, we drove into town to go to the gym to get showers after spending part of the day cutting wood and moving downed branches.  We took a side trip on the way to town to take a look at some of the damage.  Karen took some pictures on the way in and, then again, on the way home.

Not knowing that we would be getting water back, while we were in town we bought some more bottled water.  It will be needed, though, even with water pressure back.  Until the water company gets satisfactory results from samples sent to the state lab in Little Rock, people who lost water pressure are under a “boil water” order for any water used for drinking or cooking.

We stayed home today and worked on cutting and clearing.  We’ll probably do the same tomorrow.

Pictures:

There really is a house behind and under this tree (not ours.)

A lot of trees went down across roads. In most instances, the trees were cleared off the roads by the public.

restarting the chainsaw to cut some more firewood

Maple firewood

day 11

]]> http://exit78.com/storm-damage-and-cleanup/feed/ 8 http://exit78.com/update-everything-looks-a-lot-better/ http://exit78.com/update-everything-looks-a-lot-better/#comments Sun, 14 Jun 2009 03:53:17 +0000 Mike Goad http://exit78.com/?p=2124

We were getting ready to start setting up the camper for sleeping in it tonight.

While I moved our smaller generator so it wouldn’t be running right outside the motorhome, Karen went in the house for something.

As soon as she went in, she noticed that something “didn’t look right.”  Then she realized the dining area light was on and wondered how I had managed to get power from the generator to that ceiling light.  It didn’t take her much longer to realize that we had power back.

Everything looks better now since we can have our normal number of lights on.  We don’t generally have that many on, but we only had a couple on while we were using the generator.  It wasn’t a power concern — I was just limiting the hassle of running more power cords.

Power has been back on for a little over an hour.  With as much damage as we saw around the area, it wouldn’t surprise me if we lost power again, temporarily, so we’ve left the tangle of power cords running through the house.  That way, if we do lose power the cords will already be laid out to the essential things, like the refrigerator — and our computers, the modem and the wireless router.

We still don’t have water.

Hopefully, we will have water pressure by the time we get done with working on cleaning things up tomorrow.  If not, we’ll probably stop by 3 so we can run into town to use the showers at the gym.

Unfortunately, the water tank in the camper is almost empty.

We won’t make that mistake again.

day 9

image uploaded to flicker
by ziga-zaga

We went to Little Rock today, as planned, despite the storm debris that needs to be picked up in the yard — and the tree and branches that need to be cut up.

We didn’t stay long — just did a little shopping and visited with our daughter and son-in-law before heading home.

Not long after we got home we discovered that we didn’t have any water pressure.

No power and, now, no water.

Great. 

So…, we headed back into town to buy some water for drinking, flushing, and, cooking.  I’m sure there’ll be a boil water order to use water out of the tap until testing shows the water is safe to drink.  At 72¢ a gallon, though, it’s worth it not to have to deal with having to boiling water.

Then we went for pizza.

We’ll be sleeping in the camper tonight — sure is nice to have a generator and a cool place to sleep as the weather has turned warm and humid.

The good news — there are lots of Entergy (local electric power company — and my former employer) crews in the area working on the power problem

day 9