storms

High Water

IMG_875322I couldn’t tell at first that the tan, four-legged, tailed creature wandering around the middle of the golf course in the distance was a cow. Dusk was dimming, it was too far away to photograph or see, and for a surreal, stupid moment, I thought a lion had escaped some local zoo in the flooding — I’d read about something along those lines recently in southeastern Europe. This flood wasn’t a hemisphere away; this was Springfield, Missouri, last Friday, in the aftermath of then-Tropical Depression Bill. I was up for Father’s Day weekend to see my dad, also named Bill, and the rest of the bunch. We took off to see the water as soon as I got there.

These first few are from Rivercut Golf Course, inundated by several extra feet of the James River after days of rain. The water broke a record more than a century old, and it attracted an audience. Onlookers drove and walked past here and other swollen rivers and lakes in the area all weekend. The cow ended up OK, if you’re wondering, but for the night it was stuck on an island of green.

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IMG_876727We drove around past sunset, and from the car I also caught an abstract little scribble of the crescent moon and a fainter Venus above it in the sky.

IMG_877829The rest of these photos have to do with water, too — little demonstrations for myself of how beautiful and powerful it can be. Egyptians have had the right idea, I think, accepting and celebrating their main river’s periodic flooding. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to control our rivers and building golf courses next to them; every now and then they remind us how they once were.

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IMG_8785My obsession with fungi is getting a little out of hand, but how can I resist these delicate, translucent beauties?

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The same James River that was running over the golf course goes down to Table Rock Lake; the river picked up a little more steam on the way down.

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IMG_8853It was a good Father’s Day weekend up there; I hope you can say the same where you are. And happy summer!

Thanks for looking,

Dan

Flood Watch

These days we’re seeing a whole lot of this:

IMG_863411The typical June brings about 5 inches of rain around here; so far we’ve gotten almost 3 inches and more are on the way, thanks to a Caribbean visitor named Bill. May was so wet that not even two weeks of sunshine was enough to dry out the earth, so keep your eyes peeled for flash flooding today and tomorrow, especially around rivers and streams.

Here in town, the rain’s effects have been beautiful, nerve-wracking and occasionally weird.

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_C1_1707This past Saturday, a woman named Meredith and her bridesmaids, family and imminent family-in-law crowded into Fayetteville’s Salon on the Square to get gussied up for an evening wedding. The place is in a beautiful old building with tin ceiling panels and honey-colored wood — I’ve wanted to get some images in there for a while. The energy of weddings (and wedding prep) is always good photo material, too. Lots of laughing, lots of color and lots of hairspray.

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_C1_1446Every few minutes one of us would glance out the front door to see what kind of rain was falling at the moment. Weather wasn’t their friend this day; 12 dry days would break Saturday with two or three fast and heavy downpours. The wedding was supposed to be outside.

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_C1_1690I don’t know where the wedding wound up, but I imagine (and hope), after agitated phone calls, a few quick changes of plans and other hallmarks of every wedding day, it turned out OK.

The rain let up the next day, so I spent some time exploring parts of Fayetteville I hadn’t seen before.

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IMG_85761That brings me to the weird. Each night, a herd of small animals ambles onto the patios and sidewalks of my apartment complex. They’ve been around all summer, but all of the water seems to have helped their numbers.

_C1_8746When I first saw them, I nicknamed them leopard slugs because of those spots; turns out that’s their real name. Anywhere from less than an inch to 6 inches long, they trundle across the pavement all night at a few inches per minute, munching on whatever organic material they encounter. Slugs seem like absurd creatures to me — they’re not going to outrun anything, and they’re nothing but soft morsels for anything large enough to try. But still they mosey through their quiet lives every night as the rain falls.

IMG_866912(I didn’t make it do this, and I really wonder why it was twisting and rearing up. It seemed fine a minute later.)

IMG_869115Stay dry out there, and thanks for looking.

Dan

Evening Storms

_C1_8253Let’s talk about lightning, a high-power tendril of electric current that, as they say, can be five times as hot as the Sun’s surface — a blast of the cosmic right over our heads. The strongest bolts can have billion-volt potentials and carry enough energy to power a good-sized home for a month. They seem to be propelled by what we call static electricity on a massive scale, but researchers still don’t know exactly how they happen. Lightning also branches into the surreal, with so-called “sprites,” “elves” and “jets” of red, green and blue light reaching tens of miles toward space.

I haven’t had a chance to photograph lightning since a year ago. I’ve gotten better with the mechanics — narrow aperture, focus not quite on infinity, long exposure — but timing is still mostly luck, at least the way I’m doing it. Lots of frames of empty sky Friday night, when I took the photo above up in Rogers. I don’t know if there’s any avoiding that. I was so dang happy to get that photo.

I waited to post it because the forecast called for storms all weekend — maybe I’d get more chances. In the meantime, I went to Fayetteville’s Springfest, with its live music and short dog parade, and to the Botanical Gardens of the Ozarks.

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_C1_8404The last time I was at the botanical gardens, it had been below freezing for four days, freezing the fountains’ water into forms I’d never seen before. It was a little different this time around.

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_C1_8508This is the bleeding heart flower, which apparently has a short Japanese myth attached to it explaining its striking shape.

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_C1_8499I finally got another chance at catching lightning Sunday evening, a nice bookend for the weekend. These were shot from my apartment building, if anyone’s worried I was running out into ongoing storms. I wouldn’t recommend doing that.

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_C1_8660Stay safe out there, and thanks for looking.

Dan

Tornado Season

IMG_1865This 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.

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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.

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IMG_1891On 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.

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IMG_7899I 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.

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IMG_7919One 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.

_C1_7894Thanks for looking,

Dan