Tag: weather

Tornado Weather

Leave a comment

The other morning Doug looked at the sky and said, tornado weather. The clouds were dramatic, moving fast, with pouchy bottoms and casting a greenish light that didn’t come through in this photo. It just looked spooky to me, but Doug has lived in Michigan long enough to know what it meant. I made sure I knew where the cat was, in case we needed to grab her for a trip to the basement.

It started to rain so hard and so noisily I thought it was hail. It was rain, crazy frantic rain, the kind they call “mata pajaritos” in Chile, rain that kills little birds, because it knocks the nests out of the trees. Rain made the water in the birdbath outside my window look like a mosaic, or the snakework in a medieval Celtic manuscript.

It was the middle of the afternoon, but the sky grew so dark the sensor on the back deck turned the string lights on. Rain streaked down the photo I took, like confetti. The power went out; the generator turned on. The alarm on my phone began to blare, the tornado sirens started to wail, and the cat freaked out. We grabbed her for the trek to the basement, freaking her out even more. It was nice down there, but she doesn’t like to be grabbed. As we settled her down we heard a big thump. In a few more minutes things got quiet and we went upstairs to check for damage.

The house was fine. The roof was fine. The yard was covered with leaf litter, the deck with overturned flowerpots, and in the backyard the top third of a black cherry tree was standing on its head, draped over a powerline. Thousands of people, said the radio, were without power; businesses were shuttered; there was a tornado, a small one they said, in Detroit. And yet the sky was all blue innocence.

We got the generator because, being at the end of a powerline that served only a few dozen people, we were usually – and quite reasonably – among the last to get restored. This time the tree hanging on the line was a hazard that bumped us ahead in the queue. With the widespread damage it still took a couple of days for DTE to get a crew out, but they did come, and chunked the tree into pieces and onto the ground. After they left I inspected the pile for birds’ nests, but it seems that none were harmed.

The Natural Demonstration of Change

Leave a comment

I call this room my studio; sometimes Doug calls it my office. It holds my desk, my art supplies, my craft supplies, much of my indoor gardening, and my writing chair. Builders and real estate agents called it the living room, a term that’s always puzzled me – living, as opposed to what? I love the beautiful light from these big windows and Doug preferred the basement for his woodshop, so the deskartcraftgardenwriting room is mine. I find much inspiration watching the change of weather, wildlife, bloom, and growth in this one little slice of view. This was my view yesterday morning, the flowers all inside, the snow lingering.

As I walked out in the afternoon, the ice at the top of the driveway looked like a much wider view from an airplane window, flying over Midwestern farms and lakes as winter loosened into spring.

On the other side of the driveway our Spring Lake has appeared as usual. This is where the snow piles up when Christen plows us out, storm after storm, all winter. Early warming weather melts the snow, but the ground stays frozen so the water can’t drain away. Nice little pond, but by the time the ducks come back it’s gone.

By dinnertime it was 52 degrees outside, and many more ephemeral lakes had appeared. The prettiest one is up the road where the pavement ends and the dirt road begins, changing the drainage picture somewhat – this little lake is even more ephemeral.

Then come nightfall everything froze again, and I retreated to my Tulip View. The tulips, a mix of past and present, are blooming and fading under the small string of twinkle lights I couldn’t resist leaving up after Christmas. I have friends who are impatient for spring, but I find I enjoy this up and back – it’s like saying to time, you think you’re going in just the one direction? Ha, Michigan has news for you. Time’s arrow deflected, for a moment, in its flight.