Fall Miscellanea

Certainly 2020 will go down in history as an extraordinary year. We are still desperately struggling with Covid-19 and looking forward to a vaccine. Weatherwise, we had something like 27 hurricanes that entered the Gulf of Mexico with most of them making some landfall in the continental United States. The storm picture kept us engaged and worried because of all the family members we have in the potential target areas of those storms. Poor Jessica had to flee from her place of employment and home in the St. Charles, Louisiana area twice as two major hurricanes made landfall near there.

We were particularly attentive and worried when one of the hurricanes targeted the city of New Orleans because of Ashleigh and Jordan's recent move to an apartment in downtown New Orleans. When hurricane Sally threatened New Orleans, we hoped they would flee to the relative safety of Pearl River, but nope! They stuck it out in downtown NO. Fortunately for them, Sally veered west and hammered Jessica's area in Lake Charles instead. Then we were worried when this hurricane (we lost track of names) was headed straight for New Orleans on September 16. But shortly before landfall, it made an almost right-angle turn and hammered Montgomery instead. We actually got more wind and rain in Atlanta than the girls did in New Orleans!

Through August through October my major preoccupation with the news was with The Weather Channel, tracking the various storms of summer and fall. Part of the reason for that preference was my extreme distaste for the national news, making perverse heroes out of the worst of villains and in my view painting a grossly false picture of the country. Anyway, another hurricane which missed New Orleans was headed toward Atlanta on October 10 and I watched the Weather Channel and Channel 2 Atlanta as they pointed out the multiple circulation patterns in the Doppler radar. Seeing bright green and red areas in close proximity signaled potential or actual tornadoes. We were definitely concerned about the multiple potential tornadoes, and were ready to head for the basement as the intense rain activity approached us as seen at right. We did get wind and rain, but fortunately no real damage.

Tree roots grow that fast? Along with the major changes for the world's population brought by the Covid pandemic were things that were just minor annoyances and inconveniences. Leaf burning was forbidden early in spring as a possible contributor to the Covid spread, but we thought there was a window for burning in late April. Wrong! We started burning the leaves and were visited by three Firemen! So we waited till October and after burning the leaves on the pile I wanted to dig out the dirt and ashes. To my surprise, the entire pile was permeated by tree roots! I had no idea they would grow into my burn pile that much over the summer.

What caused such a bumper crop of acorns? The oak trees along the driveway had produced a good many acorns before, but never like this! This photo on October 17 was during my fourth blowing of the driveway with acorns like this each time! After the fifth time of blowing the driveway with about the same amount of acorns each time, things have calmed down a little. When hurricane Zeta, the 27th storm of the season, roared through New Orleans and then Pearl River on October 28 and through Atlanta on October 29, there were not many acorns left to be blown down. It shattered a tall tree in the back yard and left three large pieces. Mark came out on November 1 and cut it up for us. Lots of damage and power outages in our area - the worst storm of the summer for our area.