A Brief Visit to the Eighth Planet, Assisted by Tonight’s Crazy Arkansas Weather

The sky bursting full of rapid and illuminated clouds, rushing bright blue against an indigo background, made me feel I was looking up at the planet Neptune, stretching from one horizon to the other. I went inside, to get my phone, to snap a picture, but, when I got back out, the eighth planet above had been replaced — by a stormy-but-normal third-planet sky. I came back inside with no images, except in memory.

(Image source: NASA / JPL / Voyager 2 / this website.)

Simplified Arkansas Weather Forecast for June, July, and August, of Almost Any Year

Warning: to avoid serious risk of major depression, read no further during May of any year, if trapped in Arkansas with little or no hope of quick escape.

hot

  • Today: hot!
  • Tonight: so hot you won’t be able to sleep, because you’ll stick to your bedsheets!
  • Tomorrow: hot!
  • The day after tomorrow: hot!
  • Three to six days from now: hot! Each day!
  • A week from now: hot!
  • Next week: hot! All week long!
  • The remainder of the month: hot! 
  • Next month (if it’s June or July now): hotter than this month!
  • The month after that (if it’s June now): hotter than it is right now!
  • Next month (if it’s August now): hot for weeks, turning to only-slightly miserable later in September. Maybe.

Welcome to Arkansas: The Tornado State

arkansas the tornado stateWe’re under a tornado watch here, for approximately the thousandth time in my life. Seeing a “tornado watch” alert is about as rare here as seeing a Walmart.

Do wake me up if there’s a tornado warning, though, please.

Bumper Sticker Design for Arkansas Ice Storms

arkansas bumper sticker

I need two of these for my car — one for the rear bumper, and one for the front. I drive, on icy roads, about as well as the average Arkansan. This means I am proficient at sliding into ditches. It also means that, if our current weather forecast proves to be accurate, I’ll be staying home for at least the next 42 hours.

A Polyhedral Snowman

Image

A Polyhedral Snowman

We’re out of school today because of an ice storm, and I wanted to make a snowman. However, we got very little snow — mostly freezing rain and sleet fell — so I can’t make a traditional snowman. Also, it’s really cold outside. So, instead, I stayed inside, where it’s warm, and made a polyhedral snowman out of (from top to bottom) an icosahedron, an icosidodecahedron, and a rhombicosidodecahedron.

Software credit: see http://www.software3d.com/stella.php for a free trial download of Stella 4d, the software used to make this image.