07.17.08
Brittle grass becomes the feast of Robins.
Our region of the state has received numerous heavy rain and thunder storms late this spring and into the summer. I receive multiple weather warning emails from a local news station, which actually are generated by the NWS (National Weather Service), whenever the storms are on their way. As I have followed the approaching storms with local weather radar on my laptop, time after time I observe the storms split apart right before they get here, and we get nothin’.
Last month on June 10, 2008, on a particularly dangerous hot day, the warnings were as ominous as the sky became that evening. 60 to 70 mph “destructive” winds clocked in storms coming from the west. Ten minutes before it hit, this was the bulletin: “This is a dangerous storm. If you are in its path, prepare immediately for damaging winds, large hail, and deadly ground to cloud lightning. Move to a shelter, preferably inside a “strong” building, but away from windows.” This storm was traveling at 52 miles an hour headed our way. Yikes! I usually pay little heed to these warnings. We’d been fooled so many times for weeks at a time, but, there was something about the sky.
I had just finished cooking chicken cacciatore for dinner in the crock pot on the front porch. Hey it was hot! We were in the middle of a heat wave, like we’re entering now, with heat indices in the low 100’s to 110. I wasn’t about to heat up the house by cooking anything. That’s why I like to grill so much, and I even grill in the dead of winter, but that’s another story.
Anyway, the trees started whipping around in circles and back and forth. I held my breath multiple times, because I was certain one was going to come down on the house. Daniel checked the weather radar and told me there was a “white” cell headed straight for us. White is the heaviest rain color indicator of the weather radar we use. I grabbed the crock-pot, a flash light, and my cell phone, and we headed for the basement with the cat in tow. Then I remembered I had left my laptop computer plugged in and turned on, so I ran back upstairs to get it.
When I got to the living room, I unplugged the laptop and noticed the sky outside was so dark I couldn’t see two properties away. Like a fool I went out onto the front porch to look. Within seconds a large round circular wall of moving air fell to the ground next door and began to move toward our house. I didn’t immediately recognize it was round because it was so wide. It extended from the street to the back of the property, about 100 yards. Then I noticed it’s rotation. It traveled to the front corner of our property, crossed the street and moved into the trees across the street, then shot straight up into the sky. At first I thought it was a band of rain, then I realized what it was. Holy shit, it was a funnel cloud! Unbeknownst to me, Daniel had come out onto the porch behind me. I never heard him or the storm door slam shut because of the roar of the wind. It wasn’t the sound of a locomotive you hear about on the news when tornados are coming. As I turned to open the door, I nearly ran into him. I yelled, “It’s a funnel cloud, down to the basement”, and pushed him into the house. On the way I grabbed my laptop and we ran to the basement. Ten minutes later it was all over. So little rain fell, there were only damp spots on the driveway. So much for discrediting the NWS.
Where was I, oh yeah, “Brittle Grass”. This morning, I continued to water the area of the back yard I started to water last evening, section by section. By around 11:00, after three hours, the pond had lowered by about 500 gallons, so I turned off the sprinkler and began to refill the pond. I walked around the side of the house to the back yard to move the sprinkler to the next section where I would pick up the watering process this evening. The grass was soft. No more crunching under my bare feet, and not only that, there were three robins digging worms. I had watered the ground enough, that the it had softened and the earthworms returned to the surface. Of course the robins flew up into the sugar maple in the back yard when I turned the back corner of the house, scolding me as they went, but I felt like I had accomplished something this morning. I prepared a feast for Robins.
O.P.W.