Weather!
Yesterday was a weird weather day for much of the middle of the country. Here in St. Louis it was unexpectedly warm, the temperature of 72ºF (22ºC) at least 10ºF higher than forecast, and wow, was it windy!
Then around 3PM a line of strong thunderstorms moved in and a torrent of rain came down. This is the type of thing my garden needed last summer but never got. Strange to be seeing it in February.
Since only the top few inches of soil have thawed, much of the water could not soak into the ground, resulting in a river in the street:
This is not the ideal situation for Agaves that are already close to death (seen here out of focus in the background):
After a few minutes, it started getting brighter...
...and the sun came out, even though it was still pouring down rain:
The barrel in the front garden is nice and full again:
Extreme rain can be difficult to photograph. Similarly, strong winds don't come across clearly in still images, especially in winter...
...unless you have some leafy bamboo to help you visualize:
I was really hoping to get two photos of the wind-bent bamboo, one of it bending just as far in the other direction as it had been earlier in the day. It didn't happen while I was watching with the camera and it eventually got too dark, so I had to settle for a single shot. Wind gusts of 50 mph (80 kph) kept things interesting for most of the day.
Incidentally, this was the perfect lighting in which to view the brownness of the bamboo. Sigh.
It looks like the weather is closer to normal today.
Did you have a weird weather day yesterday too?
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Weirdest weather ever. Rain, snow, sleet, ice, more rain, and wind wind wind. Even a bit of "thunder snow" just to make it officially the strangest winter ever.
This sounds like the weather we have been having here - though not too much thunder with it. Acres and acres are flooded through England, people's houses too. I've not been affected by the floods - for all that there have been danger-to-life alerts within walking distance. When the wind reached hurricane force the noise was tremendous - even though my house is in a dip and protected from it. I hope your bad weather was just passing through. I hope ours is over too!