After a few days of heavy rain in the St. Louis area, heavy flooding is widespread. With perhaps 4" (10cm) of additional rainfall expected today and tomorrow, things are expected to get worse before they get better.
A severe storm moved across eastern Missouri yesterday, further giving evidence that although the garden enjoyed a mild winter, summer has been payback.
I have a problem with drooping, floppy plants right now. Everything was fine until the rains started last weekend -- three weeks or more of dry weather makes you forget what "fun" midwest storms can be for a gardener. Everybody growing upright, a bit dry but otherwise happy. Until the rain.
We had some thunderstorms move through the St. Louis area last night just as it was getting dark. At first the storm clouds were reflecting the rays of the setting sun, causing them to be a strange yellowish-orange color overhead as the rain poured down (sorry, no photos). Several minutes later when it was darker the lightning started.
Is Spring all tulips and birds chirping and sunshine and wonderful things where you live? Well, in the midwest Spring is often those things, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes you'll have a wonderfully warm day that seems a bit too humid for its own good, and sometime soon storms roll in. That's what happened yesterday morning...
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!
You know you're in for an interesting day when you open the front door at 7:00 AM and outside is warmer than in, and almost hot, humid air rushes into the house. It was 70ºF (21ºC) at that time, and I knew two things: first that I was going to take advantage of the warmth to get more garden tasks finished, and second that it was probably going to storm.
The other morning I looked out of the bedroom window to survey the driveway plants. As you may have read, it's getting quite tropical out there, and it's a nice way to start the day. I also like to check for any raccoon damage from the window first -- the up-high perspective gives me a quick overview so I know what to expect when I go out there. It's less shocking that way.
In the history of my yard's transformation into a garden, I stopped at late summer 2008, hinting about a storm. On September 14, the storm that was the remnants of Hurricane Ike moved over St. Louis and hit my garden pretty hard.
Summers in St. Louis usually bring a dozen good, strong thunderstorms or more. Strong winds, thunder, lots of lightning, and dramatic, cool clouds. This summer has been really quiet. There was that one big storm a while back, but that's about it. I was actually thinking about using some photos from last summer's storms in a post, but then things changed.
In my post on Monday I mentioned that we got some rain last Friday night, which has been the only decent rainfall in my garden for weeks and weeks. Although I appreciated the much-needed moisture, there's often a downside to these heavy summer downpours.
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