Phenology for 3/16/12: More Tornado Pictures

Third verse, same as the first: Some other part of the world gets a disaster. We get rain.

Yesterday I walked out of the computer center, into the sunshine, after hearing other people talking about "getting home before this hits." A friend of my mother's had walked out a minute ahead of me and was still on the sidewalk. I said, "Are you driving? Want to go and check on Mother?" We got into the car, and as the car turned toward Kingsport, I saw the thunderhead rolling in toward Gate City, lightning flickering against the big black cloudbank.

Somehow we slipped under the edge of it. In Kingsport some of the streets were wet, but Mother's back yard was dry. We were picking up pine cones so the grass could be mown. Mother said, "I decided not to stop at the store because I wanted to miss that thunderstorm."

Her forsythia was in full bloom, and she had lots of violets, a few hyacinths, and some candytufts also in bloom. I had just posted that link to the cherry blossoms in D.C., and in Kingsport all but one of the ornamental Prunus trees was in full bloom yesterday. One had already peaked out.

But the thunderstorm hadn't blown over. We went in and ate dinner and talked, and went out for a slow after-dinner walk, and the wind had turned cold as expected, but thunder was continuing to rumble. Another storm was rolling into Kingsport.

I didn't want to walk up my unpaved road, or ask Mother's friend to drive up it, in a downpour, so we stopped at a store. The storm passed. Another storm blew in. We stopped at another store. That storm passed. We finally made it home, about 9 p.m., without getting wet. About the time I expect Mother's friend hit paved road again, no more thunder, but another rainstorm hit my house...I fell asleep thinking, "Somebody's getting something ugly, in the way of weather."

The ornamental Prunus aren't very pretty this morning, but according to the e-mail, this time it's Michigan that caught the really ugly weather:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-moment-a-tornado-touched-down-in-mich-and-destroyed-more-than-100-homes/

Official Comment: Forget the politics. Is anybody feeling munificent...again?