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Tornado Warnings!

May 1, 2010

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.

I’ll try to look for opportunities for short videos of places while we are traveling, but they won’t take the place of or impact my photography.

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Snow day! except….

February 8, 2010

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.

It looks as though we may get a good bit more.

When the Arctic Oscillation went strongly negative last month,
temperatures in Arkansas dropped to 10 to 20°F below normal.

We are certainly getting a taste of winter this year.

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

The Arctic Oscillation has become strongly negative again.

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Dodged an icy bullet!

January 29, 2010

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!

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The cold continues

January 10, 2010

The snow last week, with some hungry visitors.

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!

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It’s not a lily

June 20, 2009

crinum

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

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Firewood, lillies, roses… and a hole in the ground (a “photos and captions only” post)

June 18, 2009

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 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 point of the break.

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

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Storm damage and cleanup

June 15, 2009

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

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update: everything LOOKS a lot better!

June 13, 2009

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

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Still no power and it gets even worse ….

June 13, 2009

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