Snow Day!

It's snowing pretty much non-stop today. My cell rang at 5 AM this morning to tell me that Butler is closed today. Luckily, I teach online, so the weather is never a problem for me! Both Kirk and Jeremy had to go to work, and they both called to say that the roads were not too horrible once you get to the main road. However, it is SLOW going!

Sarah has not shown much interest in going out in the snow. I think I'll be staying at home today! Errands can wait.

This Morning

We had ice rain all night and snow all morning...looks like we'll be staying home today!

Rain!

We're getting a lot of rain in Wichita! We have not flooded at our house, but the areas around us have. Our cul-de-sac was really full at one point, but it calmed down so I went to get a few things, not realizing how bad it was beyond our house.
My first stop was Target. I snapped this picture just before I backed out to turn around. (I could not see how bad the road was until I turned to get in, or else I would not have tried it.)
Another picture of Target using my close up feature. Looks like Target is now on lakefront property.
Wal-Mart's roads were not flooded, so I made the rare decision to buy the stuff I needed there. The roads were fine, but parts of the parking lot were flooded, as you can see.

We're expecting more rain today and tomorrow. We have not flooded in the house, and we're crossing our fingers that we stay that way!

Tornado Party!

The rumors are true- we had our first tornado close call! Nothing actually touched down, but the weather was horrible enough that the tornado sirens went off and the local weatherman told us to get into our shelters now!

Our emergency shelter- the downstairs walk in closet.

We moved the rabbit and guinea pigs downstairs, grabbed our dinner (which we were eating at the time) and headed to the basement, where we kept an eye on the weather station on Jeremy's TV.

Sarah was not happy at all about the storm.

It looked pretty bad out. The weatherman even sent his staff to the station basement and said he'd stay on the air as long as was possible-very dramatic!

Our little portable wind up lamp came in handy when the power went out briefly.

Luckily, nothing ever touched down and the storm moved on. But it was a very tense 15 minutes. We thought that we might actually have to camp out in our emergency shelter for part of it, but it never turned quite that bad.

The worst of it is past, but we're expecting thunderstorms all night long.

Snow!

It's a good thing Linda and Kelly made it in last night. This morning, we woke up to this:

So much for the ice storm

We were promised a very dramatic ice storm yesterday. It was going to be bad- power may be out, trees and power lines down, people stranded due to horrible roads. Kirk and I were all set to stay home from work today. On the radio this morning, schools were cancelled. Universities were cancelled-and it's finals week! Even non-essential personnel on the military base had a delayed start! The roads must be horrible, right?

Then we looked outside and saw...lots of rain. No ice, no downed trees, no reason to stay home from work. They must have cancelled those other things last night, when they were expecting the mini-apocalypse.

While I'm glad that we're not getting it as bad as Oklahoma, I was all set for a day off! Now I'm worried that the freezing rain will come while I'm at work, leaving me stranded and forced to subsist on questionable cafeteria food.

It is HOT!

I don't know about Colorado, but Wichita has been beyond hot the past few days. It reached 105 (with the heat index) on Tuesday and they're expecting it to go that high again today. It makes me glad I work in an overly air conditioned office now!

Tornado Update

We have had a surprising number of calls checking up on us to make sure that we are okay! Thanks for your concern, everybody! The town that was hit was not near Wichita, and while we've been experiencing thunderstorms the past few days we are not anticipating any tornado weather right now. The story is very sad- the whole entire town that was hit is gone. We are very happy to have a basement now, just in case.