AN IMPOSSUMBLY LONG WINTER

Where is Spring, you say! Here we have daffodils, pansies, even the forsythia is opening… the late camellias are starting and I swear I saw a little color on a couple early azaleas. I did! But if you listened to that dumb groundhog up in Philadelphia, well, I am sure you must be disappointed. You can see a picture of this liar on this blog: http://thefrogandpenguinn.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-shoot-piano-player.html.

Very possumly Phil should be retired – a suggestion that he can’t refuse, kind of retirement… I, the Onley Proud member of the Possum Prognosticator’s Club, President of Possum Patrol (always on the lookout for lying muskrats), and possumly the most accurate Predictor of a Pussumly early spring… I got laughed at, guffawed at even, when I said Spring would indeed be late this year. HA! But who gets the last chortle? MOI! As I curl up all warm and toasty in my heated nest down the street from those nasty muskrats, snug but not smug… Oh, no, not me… I remember the disbelief when I saw MY shadow and ran for dear life back into my snugness on the carport Pledging not to come back out until spring really arrives… or some delicious cat food gets placed in the dish a couple feet outside my door. Whichever comes first. We possums may get blinded easily by headlights but we’re not fools! My human CO (Can Opener) still has her snow shovel out just a few feet on the other side of the heated water dish. She even has a de-icer in the ground level birdbath, yes indeedy.

But I digress… Just how accurate is that dumb groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil? According to StormFax Weather Almanac, Phil has been right 39 percent of the time since 1887. It is amazing that he still has a job. I, on the other hand can never be replaced. Not only is my Prediction record Perfect, but where else can you find an animal this cute who eats copperheads for snacks, catches mice and rats and all sorts of buglies and does NOT ever get rabies? Can you beat that with a stick? Impossumble. 

In spite of all the wet weather we have had here, and I do mean wet – I mean, look at the yard! In the summertime this is where grass gets cut! We would need pontoons on the mower to get thru here! Or, maybe we could sell it to some unsuspecting Yankee as waterfront property, huh? No?

My human will tell you, “It always snows on the daffodils.” I bet you can check back to March of each year and find a picture of some bright yellow beauties bowed over with a layer of snow. My human also says, “Count your Cards,” to see how long winter will last. Translation: the more Cardinals at your feeders, the longer the winter. Unh huh, check it out. I taught her all these things. I did. She is not as impossumble as most humans. I am right Proud of her. Pay attention to Nature I told her. The more berries, the colder the winter.  Then there is the nutty predictor – the more nuts, the worse the winter will be, or the thicker shells, or the fatter… you name it.  Whatever. They are talking about edible nuts, aren’t they? Not humans… most of them are nuts, it seems. The point is, it is 4 days after the vernal equinox, and if you look real hard, it is snowing. Either that or these trees got dandruff!

(If you were a possum you would find that hairlarious!)

OK, so it is only 5 snowflakes an hour right now. Hang on. Just wait! You’ll see!

NINE INCHES OF RAIN!

YEP, you read that right... 9.03 inches of rain in less than 24 hours! This is my back yard- the water was up over the bottom step of one of the barns, the water was half way up the tires on this little trailer. The rest of the yard was just a pretty little lake! I had planned on cutting the grass yesterday, LOL! Guess that didn't happen! The road out front was flooded - remember this is a turtle-back road, so it takes a lot of rain to cover the center of the road! My driveway goes up a slight incline from the road, so it is also amazing to have several inches of water in the driveway. Here you can see the "wake" from the passing car! Waves in the driveway going up from the road! It was afternoon, but the sky was so dark, the street lights came on. The camera used flash automatically. The carport went under water, as did the back yard. The wind blew a few things around, cat's dishes and water bottles for watering the hanging plants floated in the water.
So what happened? It was not in the forecast... We went from 30% chance of rain to 60%, to this! Durn, several frogs drowned in this stuff!
Did you ever wonder what happens when a Tropical Cyclone is trying to form? It is not a tropical storm yet, not a depression, but it is one in the making. As something like that tries to get organized, this is what often happens. Usually, however, it happens out over open water and we just see the results when it travels inland. Well, this one formed right off shore here and is still, as I type this, dumping rain in northern Maryland and Delaware, southeastern PA and NJ. Here, the sun is out and the world is turning into a sauna. It is not that hot - if you look at the thermometer - but it is steamy.
We had a small tornado a few miles south of here... totaled someone's old trailer, pulled it off the foundation, ripped the roof off. Made a serious mess for the person living in it. Numerous vehicles, most of them 4 wheel drive with owners who think that means they can go thru anything, ended up in ditches. We have deep drainage ditches here, some deeper than 6 feet, and with the ditches filled with water (in part thanks to those who dump litter on the roads) and the road under several inches of water as the rain is coming down several inches per hour, it was impossible to see where the edge of the road was and where the ditches start. We don't have guard rails here. I guess they assumed people would use their brains, but, well, you and I know better, right? So, there were too many vehicles to count nose down in the ditches. Duh.
I hope you did not have a problem in the storm.

WEATHER EXCITEMENT!

FROM A LOCAL NEWS SERVICE: (WESR) A tornado touched down on the Eastern Shore, in Accomack County near Logan Road in Onley on Saturday.A strong storm began moving down the seaside of the Eastern Shore Saturday morning. Heavy rain, thunder and lightening were also reported. As much as 6 inches of rain fell in the Gargatha area. Several reports of heavy rain were also reported as the storms moved south by southwest along the Eastern Shore. According to Greg Lewis of the Accomack County Dept. of Emergency Services there were no injuries and no buildings were damaged. There were reports of power outages in the Burton Shore-Locustville area. Pictured: A confirmed tornado hit the Eastern Shore early Saturday afternoon. The top photo is courtesy of Linda Ross and was taken near Logan Road in Onley. The bottom photo is courtesy of Kate Evans and was taken at 1:25 this afternoon behind Melfa just off of Phillips Drive/Mapp rd, just off of Main Street.
And NO, Pizza Hut did not get hit. That funnel cloud was out in Colonial Village when someone took this picture. Colonial Village begins at the end of my property here in Onley, but on the other side of the street. It goes back to our woods that Elizabeth owned which runs from the middle of my property north and west. The tornado went thru that field on the north side of town, thru her woods and into Colonial Village, then lifted and headed down to Wachepreague and Quinby. Apparently it touched down first near the Custis Neck intersection just above the new Accawmacke Elementary School in Daugherty, then headed down here.

I have been sent numerous other photos, one photo, including the Evans photo has been claimed by several people... a few of these are mine. As I have mentioned before, I have learned not to drive thru flooded areas. Our roads back here are very narrow, so narrow some farm equipment not only takes up the entire road but can rip up bushes planted too close to the road, even knock over utility boxes along the roadways. So, if someone else is coming, it is a guess to figure out where the drainage ditch is along these turtle back roads. And they are turtle backs because it is so flat here, we have to have drainage ditches all over the Shore. The deepest part of this "puddle" might be close to 4 feet next to the field.
I do thank all the folks who called or emailed to see if I was all right. Truth is, Hadji and I hunkered down on the sofa thru most of it. Hadji is scared to death of thunder, and this storm had over an hour of almost continuous thunder. As one blast slowly rolled and rolled the next one hit. Had it been night time, there would have been quite a light show. At times the rain was so hard I could not see my barns out back about 50 feet from the kitchen window. My CoCoRaHS rain gauge collected 1.90 inches of rain, but my neighbor to the south got only 1.5. To the west, Joe's gauge hit 2 inches, and the radio said Gargatha had 6! I do know the first time I ventured out, the road shown here was completely covered, so I turned around on Stonehouse and came back home. The woods in the upper right side of this last picture is where I live. This is about a half a mile from my house. Pizza Hut and CVS are about 1 mile ENE. To my west, they lost power. All I lost was the internet and a bunch of small branches I will have to pick up in a little bit before it gets too hot. It is already steamy out there.

Now you might be wondering, since when is a tornado WHITE? It is white when it starts out as a waterspout... so this is not filled with dust and debris like the tornadoes you see out west, this is filled with water from the Chesapeake Bay! One can only assume then that the rain from this cloud might have been a tiny bit on the salty side? At least that is what one of my fellow weather folks told me. I did not taste it, so I don't know!