BurningbirdThe storms in the Midwest have killed people in Kansas, and now we’re looking at flooding from the Missouri river.
Thankfully, we’re not at the rain levels that led to the Great Flood of 1993. Then again, we’re still looking at more rain, and more stalled storms.
We have a genuine, honest to goodness blizzard blowing in today. Nothing better than to sit at my computer, looking out the window at those poor souls having to unbury their cars.
Again, just like with the summer storms, we were one of the lucky ones. Over 30% of our zip code is without power, and over a half million people all total are without electricity. Ameren says this is the worst storm to hit this area–following on the worst storm to hit this area last summer.
The phone goes in and out, and I’m posting this during an ‘on’ time. I just finished chiseling my car out from the block of ice that contained it. Well, I chiseled enough to get into the car and then with the door open so I could see, drove it over to a sunny spot to get a little solar help.
I gather last night we had blown transformers (and that was a strange and rather unnerving sound all night–like big bugs getting caught in even bigger bug zappers), but we also had thunder and lightning. Lightning with this kind of weather–it’s unnatural.
Anyway, if the power holds, and my arms can continue to be raised up to my keyboard, I’ll post a few pics. They don’t do the surroundings justice, though. It is so beautiful.
It started out cool, with ice pellets, sleet, and mild frozen rain. Then it got colder, and I expected snow. Ah ha, though. The warm front from the Gulf had other ideas, pushing back into our area, and actually warming it up again. Just enough to keep it hovering at freezing. What does that mean?
Flooding streets, and silver thaw–dangerous build up of frozen rain on trees and power lines. I just looked out the window and the trees are beautiful–exquisite!–silvery, ethereal shapes in the street lights. The more beautiful they become, though, the more likely to break and come down on cars, homes, and power lines.
Now it’s starting to cool, but as I looked out the window, I saw lightning. It’s like a spring/summer storm meeting a winter blizzard, with a January ice storm thrown in for good effect.
The weather will cool overnight, and the water running now will begin to freeze, and snow will fall. Wind will blow just before morning, so drivers will have drifting snow over the iced, downed tree and broken branch laden, partially flood submerged roads. Oh, what the hell–let’s toss in a tornado, just for effect.
But just this moment, the trees are silver in the street lights, the ground covered in crystal, and the water on the roads runs runs like rivers of black velvet. Glorious. I could wish to be that beautiful just before I die.
No, I’ll probably go like the old apple tree in the field–gnarly, leafless, with not even a few wizened fruit hanging from the branches to mark its days of glory. The kind that leads farmers to say to each other:
“Gar, that old apple tree’s finally dead.”
“Yup.”
“Picked a lot of fruit from that tree.”
“Yup.”
“Make good firewood to smoke the pigs with, though.”
“Yup.”
Another flash of lightning. Lightning. Bizarre.
update It’s not lightning. It’s transformers blowing out all around us, reflecting in the clouds like lightning. One just went across the street.