Toto, We're Still in Kansas

"Tornado Over Kansas" by John Steuart Curry, 1929.

I'm in love with John Steuart Curry and, in particular, the painting above.  Take a minute to really look at the movement in the painting - what are they turning back to look at that is just off the right side of the painting?  And why isn't someone grabbing that chicken!?  The use of color is gorgeous and he captures the green sky as only someone that has lived in the Midwest can (for those of you that haven't had the pleasure of being in a tornado, the sky often turns green before the storm hits).  If you want to see some more beautiful images created by Curry, click here.

We woke up this morning to find outselves unscathed by yesterday's weather events despite the fact that we were under TorCon 9 on a scale of 10 just to the west of us.  6 is a moderate possibility of a tornado and 8 is high probability.  Those weather guys scared the bejeezus out of everyone.  But for good reason, as there were tons of tornados not that far from us.  I went to bed last night watching them report on a large wedge tornado that wizzed past southern Wichita, KS where we have friends and co-workers.  We had high winds but really not alot of rain and no sirens.  Seems that the storms ended up going north of us in a severe southwest to northeast pattern.

Unfortunately, there were others that weren't so lucky.   I just read on CNN that there are at least 5 confirmed dead in Oklahoma and untold property damage.  An emergency has been declared in Kansas. My heart goes out to all those folks who have lost loved ones and their homes.  This is probably the scariest thing about living in the Midwest.

We're pretty sheltered living on the east side of downtown KC and it's unusual to have a tornado go through the main part of a large city (but not rare - it DOES happen).  So our concern was really wind and large hail associated with these storms and the devastation that it would wreak on our garden.  So we spent some time prepping for the weather yesterday - staking tomatoes, covering some of the plants, closing the west window in the coop, etc.  Cruella is now back in with the flock because we thought she would be better protected in the main coop.  We didn't get the hail, fortunately, but yesterday was extremely windy and it's still that way this morning, with gusts up to 45 mph.  Which bring me to one of my favorite "it's so windy" jokes:

"It's so windy that one of my chickens laid the same egg 4 times."

Ba-da-boom!

Finn and Domino went out with me early this morning to let the chooks out and check on the garden and everything looks OK.  If there's anything good to come out of this storm front, it's that our fledgling bean, squash, watermelon and cucumber plants will now be hardened from the wind blowing on them.

Did you come through the storm OK?  See a tornado?  I hope all of you are OK!

This post is linked to this week's Ole' Saturday Homesteading Trading Post.  Clicky to see what other folks are up to!