Storms, Rain, Crazy

After a night of heavy rain Monday evening, the sun started to peek through the fog. 

The weather service warned of afternoon storms in our area once more on Tuesday.

I took the pups for a very early morning walk down to check out our little creek. I wanted to see if there had been damage to the forest fences. Thankfully, there wasn't. The forest around us had heavy fog lifting from the cool streams.

Everything was soggy so I started to clean a flower bed up. I gave up in playing in the mud.

Hannah had an afternoon Vet appointment to get her second booster for distemper, parvo, and hepatitis. I thought about taking them to the Reserve, but decided to stay close to home.

We went to some DNR land close to home. It is public land along the stream called Tainter Creek in Tainter Hollow.

It is one of those cool places to find spring ephemerals.

We found several patches of Blood Root that had their flowers damaged by the rains overnight. Of course,  Hannah had to checkout what I am photographing. Miss Curious is getting better about staying close while I am doing photography.

Her recall is getting much better.

Wood Anenomes

Trout Lilies not blossoming yet

I also found dozens of patches of Virginia Bluebells emerging! 

I found one plant of Dutchman's Breeches that actually had flowers. Others were just emerging.

We walked along Tainter Creek which was swollen just over its banks.

There are no buildings in this very steep valley. If there is rain, the creek floods. All of the water from the ridges around here run into the creek.

Our morning ended up being quite pleasant.

By late afternoon I was tired from the intense storms we'd had Monday. I don't sleep well during storms. 

The dogs and I took a short nap. There is peace in the house when both of them are tired! 

Somehow, they have both become Velcro dogs.

While I was at the Vet's office, Tuesday afternoon for Hannah's updated boosters, NOAA came out with severe weather warnings 3 times. They warned of a severe thunderstorm producing Giant Hail and a Tornado just miles from the Vet office. 

Wait, What? Giant Hail??? Never heard that term before!

That eeee eeee eeee noise kept going off on the radio in the office along with notifications on my cell phone. We skedaddled home to get things put away before the storm hit our place.

I came down the driveway and looked up at the sky. It was wicked looking but I was ahead of the front.

I hustled and put Little Richard and the car in the shed. The mules were eating grass but looked up when the front arrived and disappeared into the woods.

The storm that arrived at 5ish PM decimated a whole town and so many vehicles. Friends of mine said it looked like a bomb went off. Even wildlife was affected by the baseball and softball sized hail.

Photos from locals posted on FB.

Thank goodness that storm went around us.

However we did have some hail and torrential downpours around 9 PM. Very scary stuff. I heard things hitting the house.

Lucky for me, I found no damage this morning. We had over an inch of rain in the rain gauge. That made for fun exploring in the creek this morning.

The dogs and I got muddy and enjoyed every moment of it.

There is another round coming through this afternoon.

As we say in Westby and Viroqua.

Uffdah.