Journal: Blizzards, Tornadoes, & Earthquakes, Oh, My!

 

Last Tuesday morning at a quarter after ten, the temperature was 39°, on the way up to 56°, bright and sunny, and the front yard was full of robins.  I relayed this to a cousin who is in a nursing home, and she said, “I don’t see many robins; mostly black birds.”

Nursing homes should put up more bird feeders!  There were feeders at Prairie Meadows, where my brother Loren was, and also at Brookestone, where my sister Lura Kay was.  Most people enjoy watching the birds; and if squirrels come along, all the better!  😅

We have three kinds of black birds out here in the country:  Common grackles (above), European starlings, and Red-winged blackbirds.  In town, they have Brewer’s blackbirds, and sometimes crows.

I did a bit of housecleaning, refilled the bird feeders, paid the bills, and then headed upstairs to my quilting studio. 

Someone I know likes to chat with AI ‘characters’.  I asked her, “What happens if you tell it to do things it cannot do?  ‘Bring the car around, please.’  Or argue with it?  You know, such as informing it that it’s wrong about most anything it happens to say.” 

I’ve done that with Windows Copilot and its forerunner, Cortana.  Copilot just quietly subsides.  No fun at all.  Cortana used to say a variety of cheeky things.  “I’ll get right on that, and then I may or may not let you know what I find.”  To my car request, Cortana responded, “I’ll push it off the three-story car garage straight away.”

I suppose unhumorous consumers protested, and caused the programmers of Copilot to make it bland and boring, though it does have a lot more info at its figmental fingertips.

That day started a week of extreme weather across the United States.  At 4:30 p.m., I saw that one to two feet of snow was expected in the Cascades.  Tornado watches were issued for a good part of Illinois.  1.5” hail was expected in Abilene.

Fifteen minutes later, the storms in Illinois were towering at 50,000 feet tall!  Though this did not bode well, and I don’t want to see people hurt or their property ruined, I nevertheless like watching and listening to the weather.  It reminds me of standing in the open garage door under the front eave of our house with my father, holding his hand, watching big storm clouds rolling in.  I pulled up a live stream of Ryan Hall, Y’all on YouTube, and got on with the listening and watching.

Here’s a big, ugly, menacing, rotating cloud, directly in front of some storm chasers near Pontiac, Illinois.  Several of them were chasing the same storm – in fact, there were more than a hundred storm chasers on it, sometimes creating dangerous bottlenecks for each other.

That funnel cloud turned into a bad tornado that devastated Kankakee, Illinois.

Someone posted a picture of one of many destructive, spiky 5” hailstones that broke all previous records – and then that record was promptly shattered when someone found one that was even bigger:  A massive 6.14-inch-diameter hailstone was recovered in Kankakee, Illinois, on March 10, 2026, and is the new state record.  Found by the Denault family and verified by researchers from Northern Illinois University, it breaks the previous 4.75-inch record from 2015.  Unofficial reports suggested even larger stones, with some estimated at up to 8 inches in diameter.  At least two of the storm chasers had their windshields destroyed.

Around 7:10 p.m., a wedge tornado went through Kankakee, south of Chicago.  There were tornadoes all over the place, stretching all the way from Indiana clear down into Texas on the Mexico border.

While all this was happening, I went on sewing.  At 9:15 p.m., I trotted downstairs and got myself a cup of blueberry tea.  Back upstairs, I sipped tea, sewed, sipped tea, sewed...  When the tea was gone, I shut everything down and quit for the night.

Wednesday morning a little after nine, I walked into my laundry room, where the patio door leads onto the back deck, preparing to rehang the bird feeders – and discovered a couple of inches of snow out there.  It was 33°, heading up to 47°.  The sun was shining, and snow was melting off the roof; so I was dodging between drips as I went in and out the door.

Soon I was heading for my sewing room to see how much I could get done before our evening church service that night.

That afternoon, Victoria sent an ultrasound picture of Baby #5.  It’s amazing how detailed ultrasounds are these days, even when an unborn baby is only about 1 ½ pounds.

“Awww...” I wrote back, “a pretty little mouth shaped like Carolyn’s.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Victoria, “I thought so, too!”

I looked at that dear little face that we hope to greet in a few months, and thought how very horrible it is that so many people think nothing of murdering unborn babies.  Horrible, horrible!  What a way to bring down the wrath of God!  There’s not a soul alive who doesn’t know that’s absolutely wrong.  Anyone who says otherwise is just plain dishonest.

After church that evening, we picked up sandwiches from Subway.  Yummy!  It’s been quite a while since we had Subway sandwiches.

Thursday at midmorning, it was 40°, on the way up to 67° – and we were issued a high-wind warning that would take effect at 7:00 p.m. and last until 3:00 a.m. Friday, with winds up to 60 mph expected.  From noon ’til 9:00 p.m., there was a red-flag warning for fire danger.

After he got out of school, Hannah brought Levi to put a new bass string in my piano.  Unfortunately, the string he ordered was the wrong size; he’ll have to try again.

Did you know that a standard modern piano has 88 keys (52 white and 36 black) – but Bösendorfer grand pianos have 97 or even 108 keys?  

Despite the wrong string size, Hannah and I had a nice visit, complete with tea (Bentley’s blueberry for Hannah; Thompson’s black for me); while Levi had blueberry lemonade Celsius.

That evening, Hannah sent pictures from my niece Christine’s property, where she often goes with her dogs to take walks.  “There is a beaver in the lake, and a heron in the sky,” she wrote.

The structure on the right is the shelter where we have our Fourth-of-July picnics.

It was chilly Friday morning when I went out to rehang the bird feeders – just 36°.  Lately, the grackles and the red-winged blackbirds have been hitting the feeders in droves, going through black-oil sunflower seeds like it’s hot soup. 

I ate breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, and headed back upstairs to my quilting studio.

That afternoon, a lady on Facebook told about seeing so many bluebirds in a fruit tree, the tree looked blue. 

We saw a bush like that once when I was about 13, traveling with my parents in Florida.  The bush seemed to be covered with blue blossoms, and they were all swaying in the wind – except there was no wind.  We stepped closer, the better to look at those flowers – and they all flew away, in a cloud of blue with a slight flash of purple!  That bush had been covered with Great purple hairstreak butterflies.  We had never seen them before.

That afternoon, I began hearing about wildfires in Nebraska.  The largest ones are to our west, while some smaller ones are to the north.  The governor declared an emergency and mobilized the National Guard.

For supper that evening, we had a chef salad, with eggs and chopped pork pieces and crackers, along with yogurt and cran-cherry juice.

At 7:30 p.m., a helicopter went over quite low, which is unusual here.  It had barely crossed over the house before I smelled the jet fuel.  Ugh, my whole quilting studio reeked with the odor!

The helicopter was probably checking on the prairie fires.

I finished the ninth Star Crossed block and got the tenth partly done before quitting for the night.

I sat down in my recliner, looked at the news – and saw that one of the prairie fires had crossed the canal near Gothenburg.  In the video, you can see a pivot putting water on a field, hopefully protecting it from the fire.

I posted this photo of American goldfinches on one of the nyjer seed feeders.

A lady asked, “American?  How do you know?”

“They showed me their passports,” I answered.

I intended to post a picture of a European goldfinch (below) to show her the difference, but I got distracted and forgot.  Fortunately, I have helpful friends who posted links to pages with various types of finches.  We have 17 different finches, here in North America.

Here’s a note someone posted on a YouTube weather channel:  “Ugh!  After 22 hours my electricity just came back on because of wind!”

How ’bout that.  The wind caused the electricity to come back on!

Grammar, she is a dyin’ ember.

Or maybe I’m judging her wrongly, and her electricity is generated by a wind turbine that idled down to a standstill on account of 22 hours of windlessness, and then finally got enough wind to take off again. 😏

Nawww, she meant the wind took out electricity for 22 hours, and it is finally back on.

A friend told of seeing a nice-looking upright piano in a thrift store, and wondered if she should’ve bought it.  The next time she saw it, there was a ‘Sold’ sign on it.

My opinion:  Always assume Laurel and Hardy brought any used piano to a thrift shop, or that they were the direct cause of it actually being there.  For reference, see The Music Box.

Some rain and snow was expected in some of the areas where there are fires; but the trouble was, so were high winds up to 70 mph.  Winds downing power lines sparked the largest of the fires.  Another was from embers from a prescribed burn.  Foolish, to have a prescribed burn in bone-dry areas where the winds were expected to pick up like they did.  Some said the wind was ‘unexpected’, but that’s not true.  It was forecast in various weather apps and on the radio.

That evening, it was reported that someone in the little town of Arthur had been killed trying to flee the Morrill Fire.  Today, they released her identity:  Rose Mary White, age 86.  She was a mother of four, a grandmother of six, and a great-grandmother of 12.  Such sad news.

When I stopped sewing that evening, I had 11 blocks done.  Five more to go, and then I’ll begin the sashing.

Sunday morning as I blow-dried and curled my hair, getting ready for church, I sipped Gingerbread/Vanilla/Red Velvet cold-brew coffee and listened to the wind howling.  It was 29° at 7:00 a.m., with a windchill of -6°.  It would continue to get colder until Monday morning.  The wind was blowing at 42 mph, and would get up to 60 mph in the afternoon.  We got a bit of ice and snow, too.  There were snow squall warnings here and there.

What would my nicely coiffed hair look like by the time I got to church?!

More hairspray, please.

A friend was trying to transfer her phone number and data to her new Galaxy Z Fold7 and have it added to her son’s account.  The staff at the phone company didn’t seem to know how to do it.  The son eventually explained the process, and the task was accomplished successfully.

The story brought back memories of when I couldn’t get Loren’s phone lines set up properly for him, first because he was not an ‘authorized user’ (and they wouldn’t tell me who the authorized user was, and neither Norma’s nor Janice’s credentials worked, and emailing them both women’s death certificates, as requested, had no effect whatsoever); and second, because I was not an ‘authorized user’.  Then they couldn’t get it through their thick heads that I, as his Power of Attorney, had the authority to close his Verizon account, in order to add his phone to our plan, seemingly the only workable option.  They demanded that we bring him in and have him sign the papers.  They were not amused when I asked if they ran into troubles when they had to exhume people in order to close accounts.

After speaking with a variety of ‘upper management’ who refused to be helpful, Larry took Loren in and had him sign the papers.  

I told one of the managers I talked to on the phone, “You could get in quite a lot of trouble, forcing a person with known dementia to sign papers.  Verizon employees need to take some informative classes to learn what ‘Power of Attorney’ means.”    

What I said was so... mild, in comparison to how I felt.  I wanted to tie his ears behind his head.  In a Constrictor Knot.

I should’ve created a Big Stink about it, in order to help all those who come after and run into the same brick wall.  But I had too much to do, and was soooo sick and tired of their baloney. 

Once upon a time when I was wee little, my father came home from somewhere or other, announcing that he had ‘run into a brick wall’.  I’ll bet my eyes were as big as saucers.  I thought Daddy was a good driver!  When I thought nobody was looking [though I don’t imagine my mother missed a cue], I sneaked over to the garage door, opened it quietly, and peered out at our nice car.  ???  It didn’t look like it had been run into a brick wall!  ???

When the snow stopped yesterday evening, I suppose we had about a quarter to half an inch of snow on top of a dab of ice.  Hard to tell, with a 60-mph wind blowing it all into Texas. 

As we headed to our evening church service at 6:15 p.m. last night, it was 22° and felt like -14°.  After the service, we picked up groceries from Walmart.  By then it was 15°, and still very windy.  I felt like a drunken sailor, trying to carry groceries in from the Mercedes.

At 10:30 p.m., it was 11° and felt like -32°, what with the wind blowing at 44 mph.  Weather.com said the wind was Force: 6 – a ‘Strong Breeze’.

A couple of weeks ago, Caleb and Maria’s Great Pyrenees, Marley, somehow found his way out the front door of the garage, avoiding the underground perimeter that works with his collar.  He made his way a couple of blocks to the west – and got hit and killed on the road.

Eva, who hardly ever cries, cried.  Caleb decided they’d better get those little girls of his a puppy – so they got an Anatolian shepherd puppy from Teddy and Amy.

I looked at the weather at a quarter ’til eleven this morning – and saw that there hadn’t been a letup of bad weather.  There were tornadoes in Maryland and Vermont right that minute.  The fires continue in Nebraska despite the snow, which was too scant, with the winds making them all the worse.

The temperature had made it up to 14° from a low of 7°.  The windchill was ‘only’ 2° below 0, since the wind had ‘calmed down’ to 28 mph.  That’s Force: 5 (Fresh Breeze).  🙄

My friend who got the new Fold7 smartphone sent me a text:

“I’m typing from my new smarter-than-me phone with every available ‘correction’ option turned on.  I may have to turn some off.  I apparently can’t string three words together in a manner that satisfies Mr. Fold.  It took me 27 minutes to type this message, including the time I spent debating with the phone just how I would say what I wished to say.  I won; but the phone’s not happy.”

It’s 10:45 p.m. now, and I just checked on the Nebraska fires at the Western Fire Chiefs Association live webpage.  {These numbers have not been updated since afternoon, so they are low, as the fires have grown since then.}  The size of the Morrill Fire northwest of Lake McConaughy (‘Big Mac’) is 572,084 acres, and it’s 18% contained.  The size of the Cottonwood Fire between North Platte and Lexington is 131,259 acres, and it’s 40% contained.  The size of the Road 203 Fire near Halsey (Nebraska National Forest) is 35,386 acres, and it’s 36% contained.  The size of the Anderson Bridge Fire west of Valentine is 17,400 acres, and it’s 60% contained.  That makes a total of 756,129 acres that have burned.

The majority of fire personnel in rural Nebraska are volunteer.  Crews have come from Colorado, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming to help.  The Utah crews were stymied for hours on account of blizzard conditions shutting down the roads in Wyoming.

Here’s a video of an airplane helping fight the fires.

The photo below was taken one mile south of the Ponderosa Wildlife Management Area near Crawford.  The fire crossed the road like it wasn’t even there.​

I was so engrossed in weather and fire, it was 4:30 p.m. before I finally remembered to start a load of clothes. 

Oh, and earthquakes!  There was another earthquake to our south.  This one was smaller than the one a couple of weeks earlier.  The U.S. Geological Survey reported a 2.5 magnitude earthquake at 7:15 a.m. on Thursday, March 12, located about three miles east-southeast of Cowles in Webster County.

This makes the fourth earthquake to strike the area in the last month.  The largest was an M4.1 quake that hit on March 1 at 12:59 p.m.  A notable M2.6 aftershock followed around 2:30 p.m., with a third M2.6 tremor around 8:45 p.m. that evening.

Residents near the quake reported the shaking was noticeable, though damage was minor, with nothing more serious than pictures being knocked off the wall.

When I walked into the laundry room, I saw over a dozen male red-winged blackbirds at the feeders on the deck.

All the clothes are done now, folded and put away.  Time for bed!

 

 

P.S.:  One more thing:  The Upper Peninsula of Michigan got nearly three feet of snow.

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,