Very cool! We watched the Alaska Ice carving competition on TV the other day, amazing!

Tonie ; very beautiful but I'm so cold right now it just made me shiver !!!! we are going to get rain snow mix in the morning and rain in the afternoon so says the weather people got to take mom to the dr. for her check up she hates being out in the rain or snow becouse it might screw up her hair got to love her

We had the most bizarre storm today! I was out running a quick errand across town and saw green skies in the west, which is always bad. I started hurrying home--heading east. I had to go through the pharmacy drive-through and was getting impatient with the wait. The man ahead of me got his order but just sat there. I huge gust of wind came up and rocked my car! Rocked it! I steered around the man to get out of that line and go home fast! Two seconds later, a downburst of hail hit. There was lightning, hail, thunder, rain and snow all at the same time. Within 1 mile, driving fast, I was in 2 inches of hail on the road. People were sliding all over the place, and the hail was so noisy I couldn't hear myself scream. It reminded me of the movie I saw on tv last night, War of the Worlds. So scary. We went from daylight to dark in nothing flat, with constant hail. It took me 10 minutes to get home from the pharmacy and it hailed hard the whole way. I slid off the road once, but got back on. My husband said I should have just parked and gone into the Walgreens but I was sure that wind and green sky meant a tornado was coming. I was on the leading edge of it and actually beat the worst part of it. Weather service said the winds were 70 mph and cars were blown across parking lots. I took lots of pics of the hail in the yard. We didn't see hail damage on the car. Too bad there, because we make our living repairing hail damage on cars. And you know I called my husband when the hail started, to tell him to get all the cars in the garage because our cars are always the last to get fixed...if at all.
I'll see if I can upload pics later...my phone battery is dead at the moment.

Wow, Cindi, all of that sounds really scary.

oh crap, green skies are ALWAYS bad news. Last time I saw green skies there were tornadoes in town. I hate hail. Give me hurricanes (I've been in 2), tornadoes (I've been in 4), thunder/lightning, rain, wind, blizzard... just don't make me be out in a hail storm. Scares the living snot out of me. You're lucky you were just on the edge!

Wow Cindi, sounds scary! Did the thought 'we're not in Kansas' anymore ever cross your mind, between screams that is?

Give me earthquakes any day. Well, minor ones.

Bite your tongue, Sue! We don't need any earthquake wishes here! YIKES!!!

ohhh kay I feel better now and am very glad your safe I would have peed my pants

Earthquakes are the only natural disasters I haven't lived through (forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, high winds, flooding, ice storms, blizzards, hail, lightning fire storms, blahblahblah) and I don't think that I would do well. Being as much of a pudgebutt as I am, I'd definitely need a change of clothing if I was ever in one!

I'm thinking we're going to have an early spring. This winter has been acting more like it's 2 months faster than the calendar shows.. we got our deep freeze that we normally have around January/February in December, we got our heavy heavy March snows in January/February, and now looks like we're getting our "chinook winds" now... depends on how warm they're gonna be and if they blow east or west. If they blow west then spring is definitely on it's way.. if they stay cold (Canadian winds) then it won't be as bad. It's all good to me.. I can't wait!! We still have lots of chickadees and they usually hang out only during the winter. Robins nest here year round now, as do the house finches & goldfinches. Haven't seen any buzzards yet and they're a sure sign of spring. I just hope we get at least one good "mush storm" before the end of the snow season.. love mush storms.. they're nasty filthy messy goopy, but damn do they bring a LOT of moisture in a hurry, which will make everything BLOOM!!

Just an itty bitty one Betty!

Small earthquakes, or earthquakes where you are some distance from the epicenter so they feel small, are not bad at all. In fact, a friend of mine taught me to stand still and try to feel which way things are moving -- side to side, or up and down. Trying to pin that down helps with panic. But a really big quake is horrifying. I went through the 1952 Tehachapi earthquake that was something like a 7.2 or 7.4 when I was eight year old, and it literally took me months to get over it. Our twin beds had wheels and we had hardwood floors, and I woke up at around 5:00 in the morning when our two beds crashed together. Then the power lines a couple of miles away exploded and toppled, and my mom came rushing into the room screaming that we were being bombed. Well, you can tell where it went from there... Total hysteria! A big water tower near us also toppled over and the streets were flooded, and of course my teenage brother insisted we drive up to Tehachapi later that day to check things out. The hills all had huge cracks in them that people were examining, and some of them were up to 3 feet across and deeper than I could see. And then when we got to Tehachapi the main street looked like something had sheered off and split all the two-story buildings in half, and there were bathtubs and beds hanging out over the edge -- and people were killed there. Soooooo traumatic for this timid little kid that I was. It hit during August, and I literally spent every day after that outside sitting under our front yard tree because that was the only place I felt safe. Oh yes, and in September we had to go to a different school because ours was badly damaged by the earthquake.

WOW... that sounds totally PETRIFYING!!! I dunno if I could handle that.. I hate the feeling of the ground moving, even in an elevator or one of those moving sidewalks. Ground shouldn't move.

Oh Betty, that is an awful memory! We've had 2 earthquakes here in the last year that I've felt, but they were pretty minor. I really think your earthquakes are a worse hazard than our hail and tornadoes, because we can take shelter and we're fine. Hurricanes and floods, while more devastating, at least give some warning. I still get the occasional nightmare from the bad tornado we had in 1991, usually brought on by Weather Channel running the show about that tornado outbreak.
Today is a warm and sunny day. I have a few deep ice drifts left in the shade, and no damage on the car, so it all seems like a bad dream.
The ground is so soft and moist that I was able to dig out a huge dead rose this morning. Is there a documented reason not to plant a new rose where one died of rose rosette? Isn't the disease spread by mites?

Just remember: Earthquakes are just Mother Nature rearranging the furniture in her house. Of course, she has total disregard for any problems she causes to those living in her house.

After having lived thru the Sylmar quake and the one that hit and took apart Fillmore, Piru are in the 90's, I just don't get excited as long as she only moves a couch or chair. It's when she moves all the furniture at the same time that I get excited.

Hey, are you the Marti that used to live in Bakersfield? I think I remember having an earthquake exchange with you over in DG before I gave it up... And if so -- HI MARTI! And if not -- HI MARTI!

LOL, I hate rearranging furniture. My mom would have me rearrange her living room every single 3 months when I was growing up.. just to put everything back by the end of the year! Couldn't get her to just *leave* the furniture.. explaining that in 9 months everything's going right back to where it is right now. Oh well, can't tell moms nuthin'.

High for today is supposed to be 62. Tomorrow snow. Friday in the 30s, Saturday back in the 50s, Sunday snow. This is DEFINITELY spring weather we're getting. I need to check out my forsythias to see if they're starting to swell. I can't depend on my lilacs.. they're too retarded & will bloom whenever they feel like it. But I think I lost my "Lena's" Scottish Broom. Again. This is twice I've tried to grow them! :(

Zigg zagg weather you are having there Toni. Weather guy said t is supposed to get up to 67 or so today here and same for the next three days. Seems to be true as it is really a nice day today and my temps at the side of the house in the shade do read 67 right now.

Yep it's 66 here now! Wonderful weather. We're clearing out the creek before the snakes wake up and the poison ivy takes over. The more I clear out, the more potential planting sites I see. It just may end up being my new secret garden. I've never been able to grow anything that needs moist shade.

Cindi - YAY!!!!!!! That sounds wonderful! There's SOOO many plants I'd love to grow that require moist shade (astilbe, orchard primrose, lily of the valley, bleeding hearts, etc) but I don't have the "moist" part, just the shade. How do you get rid of the poison ivy? I've heard that once you get it in your soil, it's like bindweed, almost impossible to get rid of. I'm going to try something when bindweed shows it's nasty head in my yard (does every year). What I read last year is if you get a glass jar & put some Roundup in it, then stick some of the vine into the Round Up, it'll soak down & kill the whole plant rather than spraying & possibly killing everything around the undesirable plant. And since my front yard is horrible w/that damned bindweed (it gets tangled in my roses.. and then I end up getting stabbed to death by the roses trying to pull all the bindweed), I'm going to try that. It's slow, granted, but I'm patient (not!) and is a lot safer than trying to spray & possibly killing my roses!

The daff folliage is up, some are blooming and even the tulip folliage is showing up. I bet these three days of warm weather we will be getting will really help.