I can see my grass! First time I've seen the grass in my yard since late November. The warm spell and rain has melted the snow off of about 1/3rd of my yard. Frequently the grass is a dead brown this time of year, but the snow pack has insulated it from the cold and kept it green'ish. Mostly a weak green with some brown in it.

We had a thunderstorm this morning. Don't get many of those in January.

Time to get the Mower out before the Snow comes again.

Over here- the kids are dying for some snow. Had just a smattering come down last thursday but not settling. So if you have any to spare- send it over- but don't do it by UPS- Last parcel I had from them was Crushed.

Take this time to spread fertalizer......................

It was 75 yesterday. I was in shorts and a t shirt all afternoon. What a welcome break.

55 F today, shorts and T-shirt here too.

60's tomorrow **********?

Tornadoes here tonight. Here = 15 mi NE. Sounds like it will be a rough night indeed. Time to pay the piper.

Terrierman, are you OK? I heard 5 houses were taken out.

I can't imagine life in a tornado zone. When we used to travel & camp with the kids
in a Pop-up camper, I dreaded tornado watches and warnings. Never slept
those nights. I'll take an ice storm over a tornado any day. You take care.

Does anyone know why they called those things Pop-up campers? They most
certainly don't Pop-up.

Tornadoes in SWMO... sounds like it's time to ride another century

As I'm typing, there's a tornado warning for northwest Benton County.

I'm hoping the storms will die down and that you guys will sustain no damage or injury. Hang in there.

I have a mercury vapor light mounted on my carport and right under that light is an arbor with honeysuckle growing on it. the first year I had installed the arbor and planted the vine I was at a loss why this crazy thing kept growing all winter but just in one spot then it dawned on my that even though the temperatures would get to freezing and below this thing was getting ultraviolet rays from the mercury vapor light. I know its a little off the subject but I felt so dumb when I finally figured it out.

The storms are (so far) tracking a bit to the North and West of us. There has been a lot of damage reported. We had about a ten minute downpour around 6:00 PM and since then, nothing right here. Spokane, which is where I am, has been consistently SE of the predominant damaging storm tracks for the time that I have lived here. But not by far, ten or fifteen miles. However, ten miles for a tornado is a long long way. Here's hoping they continue to leave us alone.

My grass might be green but it has a nice thick white cover on it, wont get uncovered till April...up here we like to rest our grass for the 6 months of intense not really summer we pass off as the growing season.

I always have mixed feelings about the grass being green. I like the look and it's usually a good indicator of weather better suited to outdoor activities. On the other hand, it has to be mowed.... what a waste of riding time!

Sort of like living in an earthquake zone; or grass is green - but M M M A A A N N N ! ! !



About pop-ups in a tornado zone - it seems to me that in a tornado: these woulld be the first thing to pop-up...

countersTrike

We get tornadoes but many years ago I decided to not worry about them. The odds of being hit are very low. One did miss my house by just 500-600 yards in 1992. I know how far away it was because I was out in the yard taking pictures of it, while my family huddled in our basement. I watched it tear two houses apart, leaving only their foundations.

After it passed, my wife angerly confronted me and asked why I didn't come down to the basement when she was yelling for me to do so. I looked at her very matter of factly and said, "I couldn't hear you over the noise from the tornado." Which was true. The noise was an enveloping roar that drowned out all other sounds.

It's not the odds of the tornado hitting my house or me that worries me. It's that usually people are killed in tornados by objects flying through the air a couple hundred hours per minute and getting impaled by them.

I've never worried much about tornadoes, either. But then I started to go to Kansas in the spring. They take their tornadoes very seriously, and it rubbed off on me. And you get the blasted tornado sirens a lot* down there, so you start looking up the sky and wondering if you can make it to Wichita and back without getting stranded in some cornfield watching a tornado come down.

The Greensburg tornado weather system was supposed to come right over my town, but it stalled and hit Greensburg twice. I had no basement (they don't have basements in KS! WHY????) and my tornado shelter was due to be installed the next day. I couldn't drive out of town, because the roads had flooded. So, it had already taken out a town, was supposed to be on its way to me, and I couldn't leave. From then on, I took tornadoes seriously.

I thought about the chances of being impaled as the tornado passed by. But honestly, almost no one ever dies from that unless the tornado hits them.

The only thing that I got upset about was that my autofocus Nikon camera couldn't focus on a gray swirling mass. So as the tornado passed by, I had to switch it to manual focus, and missed a few good shots.

We had about 5 tornadoes here (within 25 miles of my house) last year, with several more warnings. Almost got to see another one. The sirens were going off and so I ran OUTSIDE to see what I could see. There was a nasty looking swirling mass of clouds going overhead. Turns out that 10 minutes later, this developed into a tornado and hit a town 12 miles from me, causing substantial damage.

There is a non-zero chance that I will be killed by a tornado, as I always move toward them.

20 years ago and we got hit by a Hurricane. The whole of the South of England did. If you get winds like that on a regular basis- I am glad I live here.

And as to your lawn- Covering it in Snow probably protects it a great deal in the winter. Mine is green but is currently under water. Costs a fortune in time and fertilizer to get straight in the Spring.

In my 55 years of living mostly in tornado country, I have never seen one, other than on TV. Seen plenty of the aftermath, which can be very impressive and puzzling, but never the real deal in action. The danger is real enough, but nothing (statistically) compared to what you take on when you get in your car and leave for work.