Saturday, July 23, 2005, 20:57
Too Hot to Rain
"The atmosphere isn't charged up enough, and it's too hot to produce any significant storms," said the weather forecaster on television this morning.
The temperature first thing this morning was already 70 degrees, and the air felt heavy and oppressive.
By noon, dark clouds had started rolling in from the west. My husband had gone over to a friend's place, and I was surprised to see his truck pulling into the driveway.
"I didn't expect you home until this evening," I said.
"It's going to storm. Winds of 80 miles an hour they said," Randy replied.
"Eighty miles an hour!"
I figured that if a sustained wind of 80 mph blew in, we wouldn't have anything left -- no barn, or at least no barn roof, no trees, no roof on the house, maybe not any windows, either.
Randy turned on the television.
"Okay," he said, "now they're saying wind gusts of up to 50 mph."
"The weatherman said this morning it was too hot to rain and not to expect any significant storms," I said.
"When it's been this hot for this long, you know that it has to break in a big way at some point," my husband said.
I went outside to find my kitty cats so I could put them into our walkout basement. The sky was very dark to the west, and I could already see sheets of rain heading our way.
I found the kitties, and ten minutes later, the storm hit. The wind wasn't 50 mph, but there were probably gusts of up to 40 mph. Then the rain came. Sheets of torrential rain. And thunder and lightning. One particular bolt of lightning must have hit the television tower a few miles away. The resulting thunder shook the house as it rolled over the hills toward us.
The rain continued for another hour or more after that. At 4 p.m. Saturday, the sky is still cloudy and there's a strong wind out of the south/southeast. It feels cooler, though. Much cooler.
I don't know if we will get any more storms out of it, but what we've already had was more than I was prepared for after hearing -- "it's too hot to rain."
LeAnn R. Ralph
Friday, July 22, 2005, 19:47
It's a Mystery
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Early last spring, a volunteer pumpkin plant began growing in our pumpkin patch. Since it was growing where we had planted Big Max pumpkins last year, we assumed it was a Big Max.
The plant started out smaller than the Big Max plants my husband started in peat pots and then set out in the garden.
It didn't stay small for very long.
While the Big Max pumpkins sat there, putting down roots and getting ready to grow some more, the volunteer pumpkin took off -- and took over the pumpkin patch. The plant has nice, healthy-looking green leaves and vines everywhere.
More than two months later, the mystery is solved about what it is -- it's a *white* pumpkin.
Of course, the funny thing about that is -- we have never planted white pumpkins! Last year, one plant in the Jack-o-lantern patch was a white pumpkin, and we had no idea how it got there. My husband and I surmised that one seed must have gotten mixed up in the packet of Jack-o-lantern pumpkin seeds.
And now we have a white pumpkin growing in the Big Max patch. The white pumpkins are kind of interesting. They look just like regular pumpkins -- except the shell is snow-white.
So, it would appear that we are going to have more white pumpkins this year.
I've got to say one thing for the white pumpkins, though. For being an "odd" kind of pumpkin that must have taken a while to develop -- they certainly are tough and resilient.
LeAnn R. Ralph