Another rough day and night for parts of Arkansas.

After nothing but weatherman chatter on the local TV stations, we had tuned the sound out.

Then, at about 7:15 P.M. our home phone started ringing. Less than two seconds after that, my cell phone was ringing — I forgot I had it in my pocket. Then we heard Karen’s cell phone ringing in the living room. Off in the distance the sirens were starting to sound.

When I answered my phone, it turned out to be the head meteorologist from the Little Rock TV station we normally watch. They offer a notification service — for a small annual fee — that will call your phones and send you an e-mail for the storm warnings that you select for your local area. We had selected to be notified for tornado warnings — and that’s what this was.

A storm cell with a possible tornado was heading our way and it was forecast to be here at 7:45.

A full 30 minutes advance warning!

I went and checked to storm shelter. It’s located inside the addition that we’ve been working on forever. We have to go outside to access it, though, as we haven’t got an opening between the house and addition, yet.

The storm shelter is in good shape and, 15 minutes before the storm cell was due, we headed to the that way. We took jackets, our laptops, the portable hard-drives with all of my photos, Karen’s purse, my wallet, our budget book and three flashlights. I had already put a couple of camp chairs down there.

About 7:45, it looked like the cell was going north of us, so I went back in the house to check what they were saying on TV. They showed the cell in our area, with the heaviest part of it to the north, but said that the part right over us was showing rotation, so I headed back to the shelter, where we waited for another ten minutes.

It turns out the cell went about 7 miles north of us and then died almost completely away over the next 30 minutes.

This is the first time that we actually used the shelter. Even though nothing came of it, it is comforting to have it available — just in case.

Especially the way things have been going this year!

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow’s news. We already know that Stuttgart, down south and east of Little Rock, was hit and that there are several fatalities from the storm system over in Oklahoma.

I’ve heard more than one person say that they ready for the hot, stagnant days of summer — something that few around here really look forward to.

From early March — first of two heavy snowfalls in three days — 12 1/2 inches this time; 8 1/2 three days later.

March 4, 2008 at 12.13pm CST
Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/180)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 100

I made it out of the house yesterday for the first time in almost a week. We went into town, but I still wasn’t feeling the greatest.

I guess what I thought was a cold turned out to be the flu strain that’s been going around. Since I didn’t go to the doctor, I don’t know for sure. I was planning to go yesterday if I wasn’t significantly better.

Ran a fever for several days and was pretty much out of it round the clock. Slept a lot. Not much coughing, which is funny, because the main thing I’m left with now is a cough.

Haven’t looked at much online until yesterday.

We’ve lost power at least three times today. The generator is sitting ready just in case.

According to the National Weather Service, we’ve had somewhere between 2.5 to 4 inches of rain today and our county is in a flash flood warning. Fortunately, we live on top of a ridge so don’t have a problem with flooding. There’s still a lot more rain to come, I think.

With being sick and all of this rain, it’s hard to get some of the stuff done outside that I wanted to do during this time off.

I go back to work three weeks from today and the contract job will go until the end of August.

I’ve finally succumbed to a cold — first one this season of any consequence.

The good news is that I won’t be passing it on to anyone at work because I’m not at work — for now.

I was hired as a contractor to work through the first week of March. Then the students went to the plant to support the other unit’s refueling outage. I’ll go back to work about the 8th or 9th of April — the week before classes pick up again. My last day was supposed to be Friday, but that turned into a snow day.

The snow is all gone. Living about 500 feet above the river valley, when we have frozen precipitation, we generally get a bit more than many of the surrounding areas and it usually lasts a little longer. But, still, it’s Arkansas and March, so the snow didn’t stay around long.

I’ve taken about a 5 day break from reading e-mail and looking at blogs… I’ll get back to it. Just taking a bit of a break.

During the last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at, and downloading, a lot of images associated with the Depression years and the dust bowl. I read a book called “The Worst Hard Time” and found a copy of the old Government propaganda documentary “The Plow that Broke the Plains.” With all of that as a starting point, I picked up a copy of Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”

I read quite a bit — and I used to read a whole lot more — but I’ve never been one to get into the great classics of literature. This time, though, having spent some time getting to know the background, this book is an easy and interesting read. I’ve never tried to read it before, that I know of, and I think I would know since the protagonist’s last name, Joad, is so close to mine. (Did I really just use the word protagonist?)

Redbreasted Nuthatch

March 4, 2008 at 1.07pm CST
Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Twelve and one-half inches

More than we normally get in several years combined

March 4, 2008 at 8.25am CST
Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.011 sec (1/90)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO Speed: 100

flickr page

Yesterday started out to be a very, very nice day. We were planning to work outside, expecting temperatures in the upper 60s to low 70s. We didn’t know that a fiece cold front was heading our way.

The temperature peaked at about 72 degrees, but about 100 miles northwest of us the temperature was already 50 degrees below that. I decided working outside wasn’t too smart after our trash cans had blown over three times, especially with small dead branches and twigs coming off the trees. After the third time, we decided to bring the trash containers next the house where thay would be sheltered from the wind.

As we were heading back indoors, I heard a sound like sheet metal roofing ripping loose. We looked around to see if we could find the cause and discovered we had several trees down in our acre east of the house. Great. We’ll deal with that later.

Soon after we got back in the house, we lost power. That was at 1 P.M. When we called the utility company, the automated system said that they were aware of the power outage and that power would be restored by 9 P.M.. It’s now after 9 P.M. the next day and power is still out.

Not long after we lost power, I got a phone call from the consulting company that my contract is going to be through with word that they had received the purchase order and that the client would like me to start today. So I went to work this morning, even though employment paperwork could not be done because I didn’t have computer access due to the power outage.

Tonight, I have a generator running to provide power for the fan in our fireplace insert, a light, our DSL modem, wireless router, laptop, television and satellite dish — and power to the printer so I could print out the employment paperwork so I can get it all filled out and faxed in from work in the morning. Bedrooms are closed off, so we are sleeping on couches in the living room tonight. They’ve opened shelters in a nearby town for people that don’t have heat. In Ft. Chaffee, the wind wind spread a fire through over 100 buildings slated for a 21 million dollar demolition project — the building that Elvis got his haircut in when he went in the army wasn’t affected, though.

They’re predicting snow for tomorrow.

……Previous posts on this (most recent on top):

• Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho… (not yet!)
• Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, it’s….
• BIG BUMP in the road for my online plans…. perhaps.
• The BIG BUMP revealed