Rain and Tornadoes

Yesterday morning I signed up for phone and internet service to the machine shed. Wait 'til you see the phone book!


See that book by the phone? It's the phone book. Covers all dozen or so towns. One section is listed by town, another section is an alphabetical list of all customer, other sections include yellow pages and listings of other towns, big and small, in the area.

Notice the lamp? It is a childhood memory from Grandma's house that became a model for a project in art class. I washed it, installed new hardware and a shade and put it to good use.



Just one year ago http://www.valleynewslive.com/ frequently interrupted programming to give the latest updates on the severe weather and tornadoes passing through this area (see blog posts from one year ago).

Last night began as a repeat of last year. Fortunately for me, the most severe storms stayed in ND this year, sending rain across the border but nothing else that I have seen.

And rain we got! So, as the idiom goes, "Can 't dance, too wet to plow," I may as well go visiting.

This isn't Kansas

Thirty nine is the official count-that's a record number of tornados in one day in Minnesota. We watched the weatherman, using a live camera shot, show where in a cloud a tornado would appear and right on que, one formed, touched down, and dissappeared back into the cloud in less than five minutes. The storms would pop up, dump lots of rain and sometimes hail, then seem to be past when the tornados reached out to give a parting shot.

One town, Wadena, was preparing for their high school reunion. The school took a direct hit: In a couple weeks it would have been filled with alumni.

A lot of damage to towns, and a number of farmsteads. Unfortunately, three people were killed.

The good news is that the first load of material for the shed arrived on Friday-four days early.