Snoopin’ with the Snoop

I really haven’t much to say, except my “rain gear” isn’t strong enough for the Remnants of Ike. Got up before sunrise this morning — just woke up, no alarms or anything — and took a walk outside. Realized that when I cleaned the gutters in the early summer I didn’t clean out the garage gutters, and the rain was pouring over the sides. So I dragged out the ladder, climbed up, and by pulling out handfuls of maple seeds, released a deluge in both downspouts.

I printed the screen of my web browser because I think it’s really cool the way that Ike is still defined over Illinois: Read the rest of this entry »

Quite a post a couple hours previous. I’m now moving into the basement for the night. Hopefully, I will maintain no physical touch with any tornadoes. Tonight is a long night for those in Central Illinois. Warning after warning. It’s been a while since I’ve been in such an active night. If you’re browsing on the night this is posted, check out the radar for my region. I can see the lightning frequently flash. I can’t find my headlamp, and excuse me as I move downstairs.

Heh, a pause while I continue to move my bedding downstairs, to type on my computer still upstairs. Cardinal’s baseball and severe storms. “For those of you tuning in upset that the storm is once again interrupting your baseball”… such memories… so many storms…

And an eventful night nation-wide, not just in the central states, as Obama claims the democratic nomination?

Back to moving downstairs…

Down here, now, camped next to the “Tornado Closet,” and I’m going to post this before a power outage occurs. More later.

Later… HA! Once again, my area of the county seems to be in the donut hole, though, since I can’t judge what’s going on by the look of the clouds, because it is dark outside, that’s fine with me (as I mentioned before). The cells that were so threatening, generating warning after warning a half hour ago, have weakened. Kudos to RC McBride, whose name I remember from so long ago, when I was still a kid. I associate the name “RC McBride” with Cardinal baseball and severe thunderstorms. I should add that I’m a Cubs fan, and that I associate him with Cardinal baseball solely because it always seems as if WJBC is broadcasting a Cardinals game whenever severe weather hits. Much like my mom’s grilled chicken interruptions from severe weather. And as WJBC scales down their severe weather coverage and returns to baseball, I turn off the radio and listen to the light but constant rolls of thunder outside the window.

Flash flood warnings span the width of the state of Illinois, along the storm line, from near St. Louis to Danville.

I miss the days when I was younger, when it seemed that every Tuesday night, with my mom’s chicken still on the grill cooking for dinner, with her tasty barbecue sauce, our dinner would be interrupted by a severe thunderstorm warning. We joked that the storms came for her good cooking.

Or, weeks that my dad went on business trips, when we were sure to get a tornado warning in the dead of the night. I remember one night, where the walls were visibly inhaling and exhaling in a pressured rhythm until the damper on the fireplace slid open. That may seem like nothing much, but my mom used to have to pound the damper handle with a hammer to get it to open. When we ventured out the next morning, the cap on my neighbor’s chimney was gone, and his staggered wooden fence was dismantled as if someone had walked along it, gently lowering each log on his way. Such strange happenings.

I’ve been told that most people go through their lives without ever having seen a tornado. I count myself lucky to be among those who’ve seen one (more than one actually), and also haven’t been touched by it. Physically touched, or negatively emotionally touched; I’ve definitely been touched with a love of severe weather.

I’ve seen five tornadoes, a funnel cloud, and rotation that later became a tornado. I was actually scared of thunderstorms, even the calm ones, until I was in fifth grade. I remember before fifth grade, when my mom and dad would be putting away the dishes after I had gone to bed, and I would hear the cupboards shut, and I would sneak out of my bed timidly asking them if we were in a thunderstorm. I was much like our dog, Oliver, in that way, as he was terrified of thunderstorms as well, though he wasn’t afraid of the cupboards. During one of our numerous tornado warnings, my dad, as usual, was wandering around the house looking out the windows, peering this way and that trying to get the best view of the clouds. Occasionally, much to my mom’s dismay, he would roam outside looking into the sky. I remember trying to convince him to come to the basement with me, yet he very insistently asked my sister and me to come look at the cloud that was rotating above our house. Terror turned to fascination. Since then I’ve seen only one tornado. Four tornadoes before and the lone funnel cloud before as well.

We’ve avoided the brunt of all storms so far since I got back in mid May, much to my dismay. All we’ve gotten is rain. And lots of rain. The ground is waterlogged, but so far of the creek has not flooded. I detest nightly tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, because since the sun isn’t around, I can’t see the cloud formations. We’re under a tornado watch until 2 a.m., and it doesn’t look like anything is going to happen before sundown, so if anything happens after then, I’ll be quite disappointed.

The tornadoes I’ve seen:

• Heyworth cone
• NE column
• 2 tornadoes and a funnel cloud while on the expressway in Colorado on vacation
• The F0 fluke, on the day before I started junior high school, in the field south of our subdivision

(With a bit of editing, I could turn this into a creative nonfiction piece. Something for me to keep in mind.)

Thus far in my vegetable garden, I have in broccoli, peas and beans from last year (the scarlet runners are from 2 years ago), all of which have at least one sprout up and protected from the bunnies who have very much of other stuff to eat. Well, the broccoli is not protected. I’m going to check it tomorrow. We got 1.5 inches of rain yesterday, and a tornado warning due to rotation over my town, which became a funnel cloud over some towns farther east, but no tornado. I wish I’d seen the rotation, yet except for the rain and the initial entrance, it was a pretty calm storm here. Actually, as I headed inside from the front porch when the squall line first arrived, with rain drilled in from the NW hitting my face, the wind snatched the door out of my hand and threw it open toward the NW. So I may have had a taste of the rotation even if I didn’t see it.

Since we were under a tornado watch yesterday morning until 2pm (with the NWS issuing us a second one until 10pm), I figured it was going to rain, so I planted okra and carrots, scallions, and radishes yesterday. Didn’t expect such a deluge, and I hope my seeds didn’t wash away. All my seeds this year, except for fodder radish for cover, and turnips, are from last year. The radishes I planted yesterday were the leftover White Hailstones from last year. There are a few volunteer radishes, hot! in tasted, and a few volunteer scallions, which taste a bit like hot peppers though they weren’t near those last year, and the usual volunteer dill and mustard. And one or two volunteer carrots that I’ve tried not to disturb as I create the other beds, but they’re so fragile that they’ve tended to disappear.

Whether or not it’s a good planting practice, I enjoy throwing a lot of species in one bed, making sure of course that i don’t plant varieties that dislike each other. I’m not sure that I’ll be here come harvest time again, and I’m a bit annoyed. But I’m planting it nonetheless. Just not going to plant anything that will cause a weedy mess. There was a warning written on the buckwheat package to harvest it or mow it down instead of letting it go to seed, because it would cause a weedy mess. Two days before I left for north carolina last year, I realized that buckwheat is the same species as bindweed (Buckwheat post). And of course, it went to seed after I left because I didn’t take it down. And there’s a ton of bindweedy-looking plants in the back half of the garden. Joy. And tansy! Has invaded the vegetable garden. What fun.

This tour was awesome, as per usual. The forecasters warned of the strong and moist Pacific storm system, so I packed for freezing, snowy weather. We got wind. I’m not talking a 5-10 mph breeze, but 25-30 sustained, with higher gusts.

10. If our supe says one mile, it’ll take an hour walking at about 3 miles an hour. If he says 2 miles, it will be a wild goose chase that takes 4 hours.

9. Wild horses in the desert are no longer a myth made up by the BLM to protect land. We actually saw some, and Burke and Megan walked with them, kinda. I’ll add pictures when I upload them.

8. If I don’t bring my prosumer zoom camera, I’ll want it. If I do bring it, I won’t use it. Solution: keep it in the truck (per Bryan).

7. Even if you’re getting back to the field station from a long, hard 8-day tour, Chad will put you to work, with a mischievous smile, at any chance, and you can’t complain because he spread 26 tons of gravel on our parking lot by himself…

6. A “few rolls of barbed wire and a couple of T-posts” one mile out in the wilderness equals 11 rolls of barbed wire and about the same number of grouped-by-four T-posts. For a 9-person conservation crew, that adds up to bruises all along the hip and shoulder area, a few moments (or a half hour) of frustration, and extrememly sore shoulders. And for me, an extremely sore right bicep. One T-post weighs approximately 8-10 pounds. Lugging 40 pounds a mile through the wilderness is easy when the weight is on your lower back hips, like as with a pack. Having to carry 40+ pounds a mile through the wilderness in your arms (twice)…builds muscle. Yay!

5. If it’s cold and windy when it’s time to make dinner, dinner will be a scavenge-for-yourself affair.

4. If you (like me) are of a slight build and are on a 9-person conservation work crew of 6 guys, then at some point or another, you will probably be bench pressed. Dave’s video forthcoming when I get a copy. I never got a copy from Dave; here’s Jon’s:
I got a copy of the video from Jon.

3. If you (like me) have been bench pressed by your co-workers, they will begin volunteering you and your body type for other adventures, such as you climbing into 8 rolls of barbed wire in order to roll them a mile out of the BLM wilderness and back to the truck. Axels are not allowed in the wilderness, but the reasoning was that since the rolls would not be rotating around me, and I would be moving at the same speed and direction as them, I would not be an axel and the process would not be illegal.

2. My Eureka AlpineLite 2XT 4-season tent stood up to the wind and cold. I did have it guy-lined to the wilderness border fence, but it didn’t move and it didn’t look like the fence stopped it from moving (since it had survived strong winds before I guy-lined it). Other tents were upside-down, moved 6-feet or so, or damaged by a pole through a fly.

1. Don’t EVER squat downwind of a folding table on a windy day. See, I was securing the empty water coolers and the wind kicked up some dust in my face. I turned away from the wind and the next thing, I heard a big thud on my head, and I was lying in the dirt no longer holding the water coolers I had tied to the table that hit me in the head and blew almost into the wash when the wind picked it up. Where was Dave and his movie camera?