QuilterSal's Pieceful Harbor: Week 18 - Mother Nature Has a Tantrum

This past week has been one to try the patience of a saintlier person than I am...I was pretty good, I will admit, though.

It started last weekend. Rain and more rain all weekend long. Great for the aquifir, wonderful for the farmers. Not so much for drivers who just want to get to work and home again. Last week's total rainfall was, well, nothing compared to what we got since Thursday.

I'll paint you a picture of life in the Ozarks this past 4 days - Thursday was the beginning of a storm the weather readers talked about all week. With dire warnings of water, water, and more water, 'turn-around-don't-drown' became the catchphrase on every TV channel. John drives the interstate to/from work each day so there is slim chance of flooding there. I drive from home to work 6 miles each way and there is rarely (I won't say never cause we've only lived here 13 years and I don't know about what came before we moved here) any flooding along the direct route I drive. Our house sits high enough that flooding is just not an everyday factor we need to take into account. Given all that, we still pay attention to the weather reports and predictions and make sure we have enough groceries, gas, and reading materials so we don't even need to go into town if the rains get heavy. And BOY, did the rains get heavy! From Thursday early morning to noon today, we had a total of 9.11 inches of rain fall right here! The town of West Plains in southeast Missouri is almost totally under water and the city officials had to turn off the power to the entire city because one of the power stations was threatened. Branson is in a state of emergency with flooding from Table Rock Lake and Lake Taneycomo increasing because the Table Rock Dam is having to release water at an alarming rate of 4.5 million gallons per minute - that's enough to fill 8 Olympic-sized swimming pools every single minute! Schools are even being closed because buses can't get to the bus stops to pick up the kids... That's the power of water, folks. Here is a photo our neighbor sent us of the creek that runs just behind his house.

That's some fast water!

Sunday, today, we saw a strange phenomenon in the sky -

A golden orb that pushed thru the clouds several times before it managed to break the clouds' hold on each other. The orb warmed the air, and brought light and beauty back to the Ozarks.

Our grove off the back deck facing north. Green and clean.

Facing west. Clouds moving out.

Now the cleanup begins for those areas hardest hit by the flooding. Our Governor has declared Missouri a disaster area so there should be some help coming for those folks needing it. The only 'damage' we got was a lot of water in the crawlspace under the house. This is a bit misleading cause for most of the area of the crawlspace, John can stand upright...but there's a lot of water collecting under the house and the little sump pump John uses is working it's little motor so hard! It will be hours and more hours before it gets most of the water pumped out.

On a happier note, I was able to finish a pair of socks that were part of Sock Madness...they were the Qualifying pair and I was only able to get one sock done in the time allowed...that got me a place on Team Cheerleader and guaranteed that I get each pattern as it's released to the folks who are still competing. I vowed to finish the pair, even if I wasn't going to be working toward going on to the next round. This past week, I finally completed those socks...I give you Twisted Madness in Hedgehog Fibres yarn colorway Villain.

My mannequin feet won't stand up on their own - hence the coffee can in the background. Not a great picture, but at least you can see them done.\

Our son and his wife won a trip to Puerto Vallarta thru his work and they went last week. Big John sent Young John a text telling him the when he(Big John) was in PV many years ago, he had carved his initials in the sand...he asked Young John and his Jill to look for them while they were there. On Saturday morning, we got this...