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.

Bad weather fun..

First off, here is Charlie doing his duty as a Comfort Dog. I was changing the bed and folding laundry just before it should have been Rich's 'nap' time. 

He moaned and groaned and then nudged me repeatedly until I put him on the bed. 

Just as I finished with putting things away, arranging the commode [yeah, there is that] and  filling the CPAP water container, Rich announced he was ready for a nap.

 I laughed and told him that Charlie had anticipated this and everything was ready.

Charlie pushed the blanket with his nose and nested right next to Rich's pillow. 

When Rich came in, Charlie moved over and waited, tail wagging furiously. Rich laid down and Charlie nudged under the blanket to nest at hubby's back.

That is where I left the two of them.

With the house clean, laundry done and put away, chores finished, and supper thawing, I decided it was time to get back to some creative photography.

But first, a couple of Infrared Shots of Friday evening's wild clouds and weather. We live in a hollow, the winds sounded like a C-130 airplane flying over the house. 

Things got crazy Friday night but we suffered no damage near our house.
Shot with IR camera with a 720nm filter. Infrared really brings out the contrasts in the skies.

I've been 'off' of most photography since the beginning of March for obvious reasons. 

However, I was feeling the need to 'create' something, anything just to get the juices going again. The land is brown, the dull outdoor season is upon us. It is exciting in a way because the first plants to poke their leaves up will cause intense joy. So March may be wild, but it also brings joy [unless you are caught in a March storm].

This is a photo of the Cheese Maker's shop in the Medieval Town. I thought it would be fun to greet the cheesemaker with Nina and her herd of goats. 
The mat that the characters are on is simply a cheap 'grass' mat of paper glued to cardboard.

The background of the sky and field is an AI picture I created with DDG. I set everything up in front of our old Smart TV and used the digital image as its background.

I used the Lensbaby lens to shoot this. I am enjoying the weirdness of this little lens and how creative it can be. So most of what I do for a few weeks will be pushing the limits of this little lens.

I think this is my favorite shot of yesterday. The foreground is just a piece of brown cardboard, the 'stuff' on the cardboard are the dried bits of tea from a tea bag. I used my pipe cleaner tree an alien Lego and the minibots. This too is a digital background. 

It appears to me that these guys jumped through another worm hole into a place they shouldn't be!

I wanted to do an 'action' scene too. 

I set this up and really...I shot it using all the WRONG colors.

I wanted the mood to look like night. So I used what I thought would be bluish lights...

It turned out crappy. But with some ON1 magic, I may have saved it enough to try it again in better light. I can work with this and reimagine what I'd like. For now, it is this:

I'm happy to experiment and make mistakes as that is the only way I can improve anything I do.

I'm hoping to get out and take a walk today to look for mosses and lichens. I'm in a 'close up' macro kind of mood.

I want to crawl around in the dirt and smell the forest floor. Yeah, I am weird, but there you go...good weather, bad weather....I can usually find something to do....
We also finished the Plum Blossom Lego set!

April delivers

 

It didn't look bad when it started on Tuesday morning. But roads immediately got bad and went to much worse as Wednesday went on. The shot below was taken Tuesday afternoon of our road through the woods.

One could still see where the road was. Even with the forest on both sides of the road, the winds were blowing snow through the trees! It was fierce!

This was the view in the afternoon of the 2nd just after my neighbor had gone to pick up her son from school as they closed the schools early.

The snows were wet and heavy.

I walked up the next morning to see what I could see. Olive reported high winds on the ridge and whiteouts.

She was not kidding.

Back home I thought I'd take a peek at the woods across the pasture and...

This is what I saw from the porch. The line on the left is a porch support.

Soon reports of businesses closing on Main Street filtered in. Most of the stores and even the DQ in town closed up. The company that does garbage collection pulled their trucks off the road.

Our township grader got stuck in a drift and had to have other equipment dig it out.

The mules had plenty of hay and warmed water. They hid out in the deep woods for most of the time except when they came up for water.

It wasn't particularly cold, as the snow was very wet and very heavy. I was surprised that the wind could actually blow the snow around. At our municipal airport, they clocked 48 mph winds, so I guess that answered that question.

The worst part of it all was knowing that I had an appointment in town that we surely could not miss. I had called for my plow guy the day before and waited and waited and waited. He didn't come. It was probably a good thing too as the roads were so bad.

I did rearrange the appointment for the next morning and by late afternoon, I texted my plow guy to forget it....and started my own snow removal project.

I decided just to work on the hill part of the driveway and get two lines so that the tires would have a good grip on the gravel while going up the hill. I pushed the snow and yes, it was heavy. By late afternoon though, it was starting to melt.

My neighbor at the top of the driveway walked down and asked if he could help. His wife had let the dogs out and saw me shoveling. 

Justin go out his 4 wheeler and cleared a path up the hill for me. 

In truth? I could probably got out with my Subaru without shoveling. I'm glad I didn't try with hubby in the car though. After all the reports of vehicles in the ditch and even town plows having trouble? Why chance it?

This morning I can get hubby in the car and drive safely to the appointment we thought was written in stone. 

Then last night I got a phone call from our plow guy. Frank was just gushing with apologizes and everything else for not getting out. He didn't make excuses, he just admitted he messed up.

You know what? I can deal with that. He said it slipped his mind because...well, his brain was dealing with other things. He told me if that ever happened again to keep calling his cell over and over and over. He sounded so upset that I ended up telling him it was OK. 

April always seems to deliver some sort of frightful weather. I recall April 20 in 2018 when we had a blizzard. 

So there you go. Hello April, you sure know how to deliver weather!

I think the weather

did this on purpose.

This weeks forecast was rain, rain, overcast and more rain. Cold, cold, then switching to warm and muggy and heavy rain with possibilities of 4" of rain with flooding and flash flooding.

I don't get too worried about the flash flooding as it happens and it is over quickly. I don't have the mules in an area where they will be washed away. During times like this I move them to the front pasture where there is little chance of trees falling on the fences... and I can keep an eye on everyone.

So all this week the weather has been either super hot and muggy or it has been raining.

All the rain has prevented me from mowing the yard. Which is a good thing. Bouncing around hurts the upper left ribs. I can walk on the flat and do fine, I can stroll slowly through the woods and do fine. But NO jumping.
The injury is not life threatening, I know that. But it sure is a pain.

I can do stretches and squats, shoulder mobility exercises, and even some gentle twisting.
Vacuuming sucks with the old vacuum cleaner.

So on Wednesday I took a nice long quiet stroll through the woods. I stopped often and watched squirrels, birds, and some deer. I didn't take Charlie and Sven so the walk was slow and easy.
Of course I brought my camera. You know better don't you?

Some shots from the walk.

These were shot with the converted camera. I just added the 'hot' mirror to use it with the regular light spectrum.

It was my regular fence 'check' and I am happy I did it. There was a branch or two down on the lines and I flipped them off. The creek made wonderful sounds that were calming.

I leaned up against a mossy tree and watched down from the bank above.

And I couldn't help but try an infrared shot. The green leaves reflect white and the trees in the distance reflected a slightly different color which enhanced look a bit yellow!

If you look carefully you can see my handiwork in the right side of the shot. It is the fence I rebuilt this spring.

I decided not to let the mules back down into the woods. Rains were predicted for up to 4 inches. Trees tend to fall when the ground is so saturated and I won't put the mules in an area where the fence could come down overnight.
The mules' hooves would just tear up muddy trails and provide more erosion to the ridge road, so they can't go back down until things dry up a bit.

In 2007 and 2016 parts of the creek banks were swept away. Our fence was left hanging in an empty space above the creek.

This morning [Friday] I will have to go down and check the fences again and do a quick check of the middle wooded pasture to make sure it is safe to let the mules out of the winter lot and back into the woods.

South of us there were mudslides and road closures and indeed, they had more than 4 inches of rain.
The weather service says we had only about an inch and a half. I'll have to check our rain gauge.

I have guests this weekend and a busy Saturday with going to the Fair and hiking.
It should be fun.
Part of the Kenosha gang is coming.
And the sun should be shining!

I have water in my Outhouse Basement!

Well...
I do.

July 19th started out innocent enough with a beautiful incredible sunrise. I went to the ridge and enjoyed a brief flash of colors.

I drove to Black Bottom Creek and the clouds rolled in darkening the morning light.
So I should have heeded the old saying.
Red sky at Dawn
Sailors take Warning...

The sky had turned an incredible red before I got to the ridge.

And the saying proved very true.

This was after the hard winds of perhaps 70 miles an hour raged through with 1.5" of rain in less than an hour.
However the sunset was stunning.

I received a warning on the Smarty Phone saying that more severe storms were on their way.

So I made a quick check of the fences and animals. The mules had gone down into the hollow and were fine. No trees were across the fences and the animals were quiet.

Then the next round came. And the NOAA noted that it would be a long night of heavy storms with heavy rain and lots of lightening.
They were not kidding.

The hail hit at about 3:30 in the morning. I'd given up sleep by then. I worried about the animals and wondered if the heavy rains would wash out the creek again.

I started to chore and noticed there were some limbs down and it appeared that a tree was over on the fence.
We had sort of expected something like that.
So I went to the outhouse which also serves as my storage for my nippers and machete.
I grabbed the nippers then glanced down into the hole.
It was filled with water.
The rain had come so hard and so fast that it ran down the hill from above and had come into the outhouse hole.
I shrugged.

This looked like a job for a chainsaw.

I did chores and checked quickly on the rest of the animals. They were all just fine.

The garden looked like a mess but as of this morning the corn seems to be recovering and didn't suffer too much damage from the hail.

We were lucky. In McGregor Iowa a tornado had come through with the first storm and tore up that little historic town. The storm raged across the river and winds tore up Prairie Du Chein. So we were lucky.

The total rain fall for our place in 24 hours was 6.10 inches.

We finished up the day and have started to make preparations for the next round of storms.
Heavy rains, flash flooding, hail, and high winds.

Yeah. And there is still water in my outhouse 'basement'.

Weather a very strange year so far.

We've swung wildly from very cold to just freezing. From frigid to mild with rains.

Thankfully the animals seem to be taking this weather in stride. 
The mules and horses refused to go to the stock tank on Sunday until we put down barn lime and a combination of sand and hay chaff.

We've had an ice event each week. 

Who came up with the name Ice 'Event'? 
Once a week the temperatures have swung to just above or right about freezing and it has rained.

Getting anywhere safely on the country gravel roads has become an issue. Our township is running low on sand according to the patrolman Rich talked to our town only has one bin left of sand/gravel.

I hope that is enough to get us through to a real melt down!

Traveling back and forth to work has become rather unpleasant. This is a shot I took -- yes I stopped-- of 'good' weather and good roads!

There are no shots of course of the bad places, the scary twists and turns that come down off the ridge at an 8% grade into the valleys.
It is trips like these that make me dislike working period. The drive to and from work is stressful. 

This is one of the roads I take to and from town or work. This is a nice sight to see on a slick day. Fresh sand and gravel over ice.

And...this is where I park when it gets like this. I can walk up to the ridge from home and I don't have to worry about falling off the driveway into the woods and wrecking the car.

Our road is a dead end road. It doesn't rate getting more gravel/sand on it as there is only 3 homes on it.

My neighbor on the top of the hill has purchased 'chains' for his and his wife's vehicle. He found out the other day that even the 'chains' didn't help. 
This is a shot of the road from our mailbox area. This is good winter driving!

Yesterday morning I took a sled-full of hay chaff, sand, salt, and screenings up to the ridge and spread it behind the Subaru so that my neighbor could park behind me. Our driveways were still solid ice. It is surprising how this mix adds traction to an area!

In the afternoon, the temperatures rose yesterday and the sun came out. 

Rich used the skid steer to break up ice around the stock tanks and then proceeded to work on the driveway.

I was so happy that I quit doing all of my catch up work around the inside of the house and came outside to enjoy the sunlight and the mud/ice.

Mud and ice! Snow slush! 
I know it looks like a mess. But it is much better than glare ice.

It was only in the places that the sun shone, but it made us very happy.

And it made Val-Barbie happy too!