Tornado Season

This mushroom-cloud-like behemoth is one of the year’s first thunderstorms for the area. A series of them moved through this past Wednesday and Thursday, bringing some solid rainfall and a handful of tornadoes. Here in Fayetteville, the storms seemed oddly fractured; I could see this cell just to the south and another to the north, while my apartment complex stayed completely dry. Tornado season has made its entrance.

This first salvo came just as northwest Arkansas’ individual tornado season starts; according to a nifty website called the Tornado History Project, about half of Washington and Benton counties’ tornadoes in the past 65 years happened in either April or May. I’m working on a story now about the area’s history and vulnerability with twisters; apparently Fayetteville has a bit of a local belief that the town’s immune to tornadoes thanks to its hilly terrain. Lincoln, Nebraska, has that myth, too. We’ll see how true it ends up being here.

On the positive side, the storms also mean spring is here for real, dang it. I had to remind myself this week we’re finally past the slips back below freezing. Let me find some wood to knock on.

I went down to our capital for the first time Thursday for work. Little Rock’s like a mix of Lincoln and Omaha. The weather was mostly a flat gray, and I don’t have much to show for the visit as far as images, but the day started with one beautiful sunrise.

One last thing: a crescent Moon and Venus passed near each other in the sky a week ago, a nice bookend to a similar alignment between the Moon and Jupiter back in February. A little reminder to keep looking up.

Thanks for looking,

Dan

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2015

Here’s to growth, learning, some things changing and some things staying the same. Happy New Year!

I watched Fayetteville’s firework show marking the end of 2014, a roller coaster year for the world, from up on Mount Sequoyah. Families and college kids joined me. You can see a couple fireworks over there in the bottom right corner above.

Some color in the sky is a relief, because we’ve had overcast skies for most of the last three weeks or so. I’m just about tired of it. I don’t know if it was because of crummy weather, getting sidetracked with Christmas prep or work’s winding down for the year, but I’ve felt unfocused and distracted since my last post. The photos from the last couple weeks bounce around a bit because of that, so thanks for tagging along.

Up in Rogers, the outdoor Promenade Mall was a crowded, noisy place a couple of days before the holiday.

A peek of sun shone out before dusk. I hope your Christmas was a fairly relaxed and good time.

It was quieter in Fayetteville’s National Cemetery, where Wreaths Across America left tokens of the holiday in front of every marker and gravestone, little declarations that someone remembered the dead. I hope you weren’t alone this season, unless you wanted to be, and have good memories of the year’s end to keep.

One last stop before Christmas Eve: the bowling alley.

Christmastime up in Springfield brought lots of cookies, lots of presents and lots of games, along with precious hours of sunlight. Sun and warmth in winter is hiking weather, so we went to the city’s Nature Center.

I don’t know what was up with my lens here, but this is a hollowed-out, decomposing old stump filled to the brim with inch-tall mushrooms. I hope the season has brought some small joys or surprises to you, too.

The sun went away again before I left.

The Sun stayed mostly hidden until New Year’s Eve, when the flat gray of the clouds gave way to a few more interesting patterns and my unfocused funk finally broke.

Before the midnight fireworks, I wandered around the square, catching a giant puppet parade (much like another puppet appearance in October) and a few un-costumed celebrators. I’d never had a New Year’s Eve like it.

I hope you can jump into the new year with, if not excitement, at least some determination to make of it what you can and occasionally to look around at the people and stories walking around you.

Thanks for looking here. Have another firework photo, just for kicks:

And some good news: The Sun should come out again on Sunday.

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Looking Up

A cold front powered through this area a couple of days ago, trimming another 20 degrees off of our daily highs. The clouds that came along with it were mesmerizing, starting with these undulating, apocalyptic examples Thursday night that arrived at the end of an already soaked day.

Friday afternoon I was lucky enough to catch the back end of the cold wave, seen here leaving southward. Right above me, the sky was a blank blue; behind me to the north, a contingent of puffy cumulus clouds was moving in.

Later that afternoon I glanced toward the sun in time to see the faint brush-strokes of these cirrus clouds surrounding it, seen here streaming from behind a prismatic clump of lower-level water vapor. Topping it all off, northwest Arkansas was treated to a spectacular sunset last night.

I love clouds. Thanks for the show, nature.

Dan

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Cooled Off

Today started unusually steamy and reached about 90 degrees, but it took only about 20 minutes to change that in the afternoon, when temperatures fell 20 degrees, the wind picked up and the storm rolled in.

I should’ve seen it coming, really. The most humid days always seem to bring a storm — I remember one August day in Nebraska where it dropped from an oppressively humid 96 to about 62 in less than half an hour. You can bet you’re in for a good time when that happens.

This storm happened to hit right as I arrived at Tontitown’s Grape Festival, an annual carnival of food and rides named for the town’s vineyards, planted by the town’s Italian founders a century ago. I didn’t get to ride anything, but I did get to feel the excitement and energy as rides closed down and people ran for cover.