Well, I haven’t done anything outside at all with work being so crazy, and the weather on the weekends continues to be uncooperative, so instead of sharing flowers, I thought I’d share the insane weather we’ve been having out here.
The picture above was taken on my drive through town coming home from work about 3 weeks ago. We’ve been in a drought for about 3 months with no rain and lots of wind (which dries out the soil). That day was especially windy (40-50 mph sustained winds, with gusts up to 70 mph) and with it being spring, a lot of fields are getting plowed in preparation for planting.
When I was driving home (I work down in Oklahoma about 40 miles south), you could see this dark high cloud across the sky looming over the town. I tried to take a picture but it just looks like a storm cloud. This was dirt.
Now it wasn’t as bad as the bad old days of the Dust Bowl, those “dusters” as they were called, were monsters full of the black soil of the prairie. But it was probably the worst dust storm I’ve seen since I’ve been here and really had people talking the next day.
Now we come to last weekend. Big storm system moves in and it started raining on Friday night and didn’t stop until Sunday. We got almost 3 months rainfall in 2 and a half days.
I’m sure you’ve heard about the record flooding in Houston, where some areas were getting 3-4 inches an hour, with totals in some areas up to 20 inches.
If you’ve ever wondered what 3-4 inches an hour might look like, I’ll share the video I took of some of the rainfall we got:
It reminded me of being in a hurricane (I lived through several while in NC, I know hurricanes!), in KANSAS!!
We had rivers in places I’ve never seen water before. Friends of mine live on a ranch about 60 miles south west of me and they had 6 inches of rain overnight and two tornadoes came within a couple of miles of their place.
So far, this has been a wild spring. Temperatures in the 70s one day, and the 40s the next. We had 3 nights that dropped into the teens in March, after a week of temperatures in the 70s during the day. That freeze wiped out the daffodils, the wedding veil spirea buds, the crabapple (which still recovered like a champ), and my outdoor faucet, after I’d gotten fooled into taking off the heat tape and insulation!
I think I’m almost ready for spring to be over now, and we’re just starting tornado season.
So here is my obligatory flower picture (it’s almost time for iris!), to keep our theme going. What’s everyone got going on in their garden?
