Another sign of spring also happened on Monday when two tornadoes touched down in Oklahoma, one of them being an F2 that destroyed 5 homes . Here’s some video of that tornado.

Today could be very rough day for folks living in eastern Oklahoma, southeast Kansas, Arkansas, and southern Missouri as conditions are setting up for the possibility of a big severe thunderstorm and tornado outbreak  this afternoon and tonight. Let’s hope that it’s not to bad for those folks. Lynne has a cousin who lives in southern Missouri so our thoughts will be with him and his family today. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the radar in that area today.

If you’d like to follow the storms chasers live as they chase these storms, the best place to do it is at TornadoVideos.net at this link: http://www.tornadovideos.net/full-screen-chaser-video.php

Secondly, our good friend Kahlee has put up a new post on her blog, Spirits Dancing in the Heart of the Wind. The post is entitled Spring Wildflowers are Here… So What’s Blooming Where? and it contains many great links to Kahlee’s favorite online wildflower resources. If  you want to know where the flowers are blooming in California, check out this list.

Finally, our March meltdown has begun here in Wisconsin. Temps have been in the low 40’s for the last few days and Spring is in the air. The forecast is calling for temps to remain in the 40’s with a chance of rain the rest of the week. Today it’s beautiful out.

This month’s photo comes from my first weekend visiting Kenosha back on the 3rd of March, 2008. This interesting  boat is a fish tug, a boat that’s native to the Great Lakes. This fish tug was first created for the commercial fishing industry in the 1930’s. It was designed to stand up to the challenging conditions found on the Great Lakes year around. There are three fish tugs currently in Kenosha Harbor, this was my first encounter with one.

I was out photographing the ice and slush of the harbor when , to my surprise, I heard a boat horn from the lake. I thought I was hearing things.  No way was there a boat out there amongst all that ice. Then I saw it. I quickly changed lenses and got four shots fired off before  the boat was by me. This image is my favorite of the four.

At the time I had no idea what this boat was, but after some searching online I was able to learn more about the fish tugs and their importance to the fishing history of the Great Lakes. If you’d like to know more about fish tugs, here’s a great source: Fish Tugs of the Greatest Lake

Mammoth Mtn is the first ski area in the Sierra to reach the 400 inch snowfall mark for the season, passing it yesterday. As of today they sit at 412 inches. Kirkwood is second at 372 inches. Both have snow bases of 11-14 feet.

The next storm comes in this weekend and is forecast to be the first cut-off low of the winter. The current forecast has the storm hitting Southern California more than the Sierra though.

Just an extra note here, this same storm may bring on the first severe weather event for the middle of the country. The storm chasers are beginning to lick their lips as tornado season approaches.

Speaking of tornadoes, there was only one tornado in the whole country for the month of February. You’ll never guess where it was?

Bakersfield, CA

Heard that on The Weather Channel this morning

This is Lady Sierra at her finest!!

Petrifying Spring Park, Kenosha WI

Wind Point Lighthouse, lake Michigan, Racine WI

This image was made by taking 3 horizontal pictures and stitching them together vertically. This allowed me to shoot the lighthouse at closer range and create a perspective that looks much more natural that what you get with a wide angle lens. To read more about this image, see my post on SBDigitalArts: The Art of Visualization

One of the things I miss most is hearing her stories about going to Grateful Dead shows. The drive to the show, the scene in the parking lot and then the show itself. I can imagine Tammy dancing and spinning to the grooves of the music and see the smile on her face.

The songwriter Jim Page has a great song that captures that scene so well, and when I hear it, I’m reminded of the stories Tammy use to tell me. The song is called “Going Down to Eugene” and here’s a video of Jim Page performing it.

Just a note here, the song itself doesn’t start until 4 minutes into the video, but the first 4 minutes are pretty cool as Jim is improvising lyrics to what’s happening out in the audience and then at minute 3 he tells a little about the song.

They say we should get 4-5 inches in just a few hours with snowfall  rates at 1.5 to 2 inches an hour. Lynne is out there somewhere in this mess. I hope she’s close to home.

Just heard from her, she’s close to home.