Egad! Severe weather again?!?!?!? Before I get into that, I want to assure y'all that there really is more to life down here than ducking storms... Like the picture above, of Kenny and Beth and their
lil' bud Beau
Kuttenkuler enjoying a sunny spring day at the park...
...or how about Stephen enjoying one of several Easter egg hunts he got to participate in, or perhaps Kenny striking a pose before a Little League tournament:
Beth also enjoyed a lovely spring day at a park in Warren:
and of course the kids loved coloring Easter eggs...
...here's Beth about to get into the treats at an Easter party.
Look, here's me even walking Stephen along a pretty trail in the
Ouachita Mountains (we did discover Stephen gets car sick the hard way on this trip, though...):
But the big excitement still lies in the storms we've been dealing with. Take last Thursday, for example. I had a talk to give in
Fayetteville, Arkansas (that's all the way across the state, in the northwest corner of Arkansas for the geographically challenged) on Friday, April 10 (Good Friday). Since Kenny had that day off from school, we decided to pick him up a few minutes early from school and make a couple day family trip out of this business trip of mine. So, we drove for several uneventful hours across the state, with occasional rain showers and a few breezes. Nothing major until we got to extreme western Arkansas... We stopped at a gas station along I-40 to change Stephen and get him some milk--as I stepped out of the van, we immediately heard a siren wailing. First, I thought it was an emergency vehicle, but then we realized it was their storm siren. The TV in the gas station confirmed that a nasty line of storms was approaching the town we were in. We finished our business and continued heading westward towards the storms, hoping to beat them to our northward turn towards
Fayetteville. We did turn on the local radio station, who were giving out storm warnings. We finally smartened up enough to heed the
DJs advice to leave the interstate and seek shelter, so we took the next exit and pulled into a Cracker Barrel restaurant--just in time to be asked to join the rest of the customers in their kitchen!!
Here's Stephen and I hanging out with a few dozen new friends:
The severe weather hardly fazed most of these people, who seem used to scrambling for cover. The storms passed quickly, and within a half-hour, we were on our way. The rest of the drive to
Fayetteville was relatively uneventful, although we were treated to a spectacular lightning show most of the last hour of the drive. When we got to our hotel, we turned on the local news. Turns out that the small town of
Mena, Arkansas (about an hour south of where we were) had taken a direct hit from a twister, destroying or damaging hundreds of homes and businesses and killing 3 people. That line of storms passed all the way through Arkansas, and just before midnight, reached our experimental forest south of
Crossett, where it spun up another tornado:
These pictures of the tornado damage show the impacts of this relatively mild twister (
EF2) on mature pine and hardwood trees.
The pine below had a weak point due to damage from the large woody vine that constricted its growth, making it more vulnerable to wind:
However, the bulk of the damage was of large (some over 2 feet thick), healthy, well-rooted pine and hardwoods uprooting:
The picture below is of one of these large tip-up mounds formed when the pine was blown over, and the tree's roots pull up a pile of dirt as the tree topples:
The orange object in this picture is my hard hat, placed for scale. You really get a good impression for the strength of these wind events. We're working on a strategy to salvage a lot of the damaged timber, and we'll try to save some of the damaged studies and install some new research on the damaged forests. Hopefully, we'll learn more about how to better manage stands in face of the agents that damage them. Speaking of which, does anyone recognize the objects in the picture below?
Not likely, since I have never seen objects like these before. These are from a fungus that usually decays tree roots. These are "
sclerotium" or a woody, tuber-like body of a fungus with the scientific name of
Wolfiporia extensa, also more commonly called "
tuckahoe" or "Indian bread". These aren't truffles, but are something like that. The largest of the two weighs several pounds, and the other probably weighed more than a pound before it had broken when the tree it grew next to was uprooted in the tornado. They are edible, although not ideal--the Indians considered them "starvation food" eaten when they were, well, starving. The fungus is popular in Chinese medicine, where it is called "
Fu ling" or something like that. Anyhow, something interesting to end an otherwise gloomy post on storms...
Egad! Severe weather again?!?!?!? Before I get into that, I want to assure y'all that there really is more to life down here than ducking storms... Like the picture above, of Kenny and Beth and their lil' bud Beau Kuttenkuler enjoying a sunny spring day at the park...
...or how about Stephen enjoying one of several Easter egg hunts he got to participate in, or perhaps Kenny striking a pose before a Little League tournament:
Beth also enjoyed a lovely spring day at a park in Warren:
and of course the kids loved coloring Easter eggs...
...here's Beth about to get into the treats at an Easter party.
Look, here's me even walking Stephen along a pretty trail in the Ouachita Mountains (we did discover Stephen gets car sick the hard way on this trip, though...):
But the big excitement still lies in the storms we've been dealing with. Take last Thursday, for example. I had a talk to give in Fayetteville, Arkansas (that's all the way across the state, in the northwest corner of Arkansas for the geographically challenged) on Friday, April 10 (Good Friday). Since Kenny had that day off from school, we decided to pick him up a few minutes early from school and make a couple day family trip out of this business trip of mine. So, we drove for several uneventful hours across the state, with occasional rain showers and a few breezes. Nothing major until we got to extreme western Arkansas... We stopped at a gas station along I-40 to change Stephen and get him some milk--as I stepped out of the van, we immediately heard a siren wailing. First, I thought it was an emergency vehicle, but then we realized it was their storm siren. The TV in the gas station confirmed that a nasty line of storms was approaching the town we were in. We finished our business and continued heading westward towards the storms, hoping to beat them to our northward turn towards Fayetteville. We did turn on the local radio station, who were giving out storm warnings. We finally smartened up enough to heed the DJs advice to leave the interstate and seek shelter, so we took the next exit and pulled into a Cracker Barrel restaurant--just in time to be asked to join the rest of the customers in their kitchen!!
Here's Stephen and I hanging out with a few dozen new friends:
The severe weather hardly fazed most of these people, who seem used to scrambling for cover. The storms passed quickly, and within a half-hour, we were on our way. The rest of the drive to Fayetteville was relatively uneventful, although we were treated to a spectacular lightning show most of the last hour of the drive. When we got to our hotel, we turned on the local news. Turns out that the small town of Mena, Arkansas (about an hour south of where we were) had taken a direct hit from a twister, destroying or damaging hundreds of homes and businesses and killing 3 people. That line of storms passed all the way through Arkansas, and just before midnight, reached our experimental forest south of Crossett, where it spun up another tornado:
These pictures of the tornado damage show the impacts of this relatively mild twister (EF2) on mature pine and hardwood trees.
The pine below had a weak point due to damage from the large woody vine that constricted its growth, making it more vulnerable to wind:
However, the bulk of the damage was of large (some over 2 feet thick), healthy, well-rooted pine and hardwoods uprooting:
The picture below is of one of these large tip-up mounds formed when the pine was blown over, and the tree's roots pull up a pile of dirt as the tree topples:
The orange object in this picture is my hard hat, placed for scale. You really get a good impression for the strength of these wind events. We're working on a strategy to salvage a lot of the damaged timber, and we'll try to save some of the damaged studies and install some new research on the damaged forests. Hopefully, we'll learn more about how to better manage stands in face of the agents that damage them. Speaking of which, does anyone recognize the objects in the picture below?
Not likely, since I have never seen objects like these before. These are from a fungus that usually decays tree roots. These are "sclerotium" or a woody, tuber-like body of a fungus with the scientific name of Wolfiporia extensa, also more commonly called "tuckahoe" or "Indian bread". These aren't truffles, but are something like that. The largest of the two weighs several pounds, and the other probably weighed more than a pound before it had broken when the tree it grew next to was uprooted in the tornado. They are edible, although not ideal--the Indians considered them "starvation food" eaten when they were, well, starving. The fungus is popular in Chinese medicine, where it is called "Fu ling" or something like that. Anyhow, something interesting to end an otherwise gloomy post on storms...
Comments
1. LOVE Stephen's striped sweater!
2. Doesn't anything GOOD or FUN ever happen in Arkansas? (kiddin'-!)
3. Thanks for considering the needs of the geographically challenged.
4. Avoid tornadoes.
You asked what the objects at the bottom of your blog were. I'm happy to answer: potatoes. Partially baked; of the Yukon Jack variety. Excellent with sour cream and a pinch of parsley.
For any further assistance regarding things you're unsure of, contact me directly. As you can see, I'm on a roll.
I find that typing my remarks makes them more effective... wouldn't you agree? So often I pre-empt these little witticisms with a snort or goofy cackle before I deliver the punchline. But in cyberspace I'm perfectly restrained.