Sunny skies, the rain is gone

The sun is shining in a cloudless sky and the rain is gone.

The rain gauge readings:

• 8 a.m. Sunday to 8 a.m. Monday – .55 inches
• 8 a.m. Monday to 8 a.m. Tuesday – 1.1 inches
• 8 a.m. Tuesday to 8 a.m. Wednesday – 1.7 inches
• 8 a.m. Wednesday to 8 a.m. today – 1 inch

So we got 4.3 inches of rain from this miserable four-day rain event.

But you only have to glance at the TV this morning to see that it could be worse, much worse.

The closest we got to a tornado was yesterday when one was spotted south of Jonesboro that tracked northeast and did some damage in Lake City.

That’s nothing compared with the nearly 200 fatalities and the mile-wide tornado that stayed on the ground for an estimated 200 miles across Mississippi and Alabama, destroying whole towns as it went. One report had debris from Tuscaloosa falling out of the sky in Birmingham, about 50 miles to the east.

And we’ll be dealing with the flooding for weeks. The Mississippi is at an all-time high flood level, as are some tributaries in Arkansas.

So I’ll just shut up about our 4.3 inches of rain that quickly ran off to become someone else’s problem. It’s a beautiful morning and I’m going for a motorcycle ride.