Dogwood Winter

A "Dogwood Winter" is a cold snap after the dogwoods have bloomed, usually mid- to-late April. Surprise, it snowed here on April 20, flakes wet and splotchy enough so I preferred to photograph snow on my redbuds rather than the dogwoods 50 feet farther away. I believe April 20 is the latest snow I've seen in Missouri. (In upstate New York I watched snow fall on May 6.) But I had to go out again anyway to brush snow off the satellite dish.

Two hours after the snow ended it was all gone. I didn't dream our Dogwood Winter: This morning we broke the temperature record for an all-time low with 30 degrees. The previous record: 32 degrees in 1904.

 

Naturally -- naturally! -- I had an appointment at 8 a.m. and had to pull out the winter coat and pair of gloves (on Monday, we'd had 72-degree weather). There's a "blackberry winter" that according to the Farmer's Almanac comes even later to the Midwest and South in spring. Hope we don't have one.

And by the way, at 2:30 a.m. on April 20 we also had a little earthquake. It didn't wake me, though, not like the one in April 2008.

Biggest Quake in 40 Years

Bed was quaking like it was strapped to a motorbike. This woke me up. Must be I had a bad dream, I thought, but I was wide awake and it kept going. Stuff started squeaking and clinking. The clock said 4:40 a.m. "This must be -- an earthquake!" Checked beneath the bed just to see if anybody was playing with my perceptions. Nothin there but the rifle. Looked out the window to see if other lights in the hills were snapping on. Didn't see any. 

Then I did what I learned to do when Nature is reminding us who's boss: 1. Put on shoes. 2. Find purse, load it with medicines and checkbook. 3. Sit tight in the room with strongest walls and least windows. 4. Remind myself where are the shutoff valves for water and propane. 5. Switch on TV or radio. On TV, there was only Cops, so I went online to see if anybody knew anything, but it was too soon, and then at 5:00 a.m. the newscasters came on and said it had been a 5.2 Richter scale earthquake centered 100 miles east of here. I've felt one other quake, in 1989. That one felt like a truck passing in the street; didn't last 20 seconds. This one was larger and lasted about 40 seconds. Aftershock at 10:15 a.m. Felt disgusted (what, is this quake stuff going to ruin my day??). Biggest quake since 1968. 

Exactly on 102nd anniversary of San Francisco quake! Fortunately not big enough to create fatalities. Of course we'd all heard about the New Madrid Fault line that made a horrible quake in 1811, when the Mississippi River flowed backwards and killed about everybody on it. But this wasn't even the New Madrid Fault, it was another, smaller one where Illinois meets Kentucky. Just a reminder for us all of who is the boss.