A quick reminder to my West Michigan friends that I’m playing with Francesca Amari and band tonight and tomorrow night.

Tonight’s gig is from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. at One Trick Pony in downtown Grand Rapids. If you’re from around here, you know where it is.

Tomorrow’s gig runs from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Seasonal Grille in Hastings, right across from the courthouse square. Address is 152 West State Street.

Besides Francesca and me, the lineup consists of Dave DeVos on bass, Bobby Thompson on drums, Wright McCargar on keyboards tonight at the Pony, and Mark Kahny on keys tomorrow night at the Grille.

You can count on good food and a good time. Make it if you can.

Last Thursday, October 27, the Michigan Storm Chasing Contingent convened at its favorite meeting place, the Walldorff Brewpub in Hastings. Present were L. B. LaForce, Ben Holcomb, Bill Oosterbaan, Tom Oosterbaan, Nick Nolte, and I, the unofficial recorder. The meeting was called to order, or at least something approaching order, and it was immediately moved that beer should be purchased. The motion was passed by five out of six, with one member abstaining. The recorder found himself in possession of a 24-ounce schooner of Cobain’s Double Dark IPA, which easily balanced out the abstention.

Truthfully, there is no official Michigan Storm Chasing Contingent. I made up the name. Membership dues have not been levied and cards have not been issued. The whole notion of a Michigan Storm Chasing Contingent is something of an oxymoron to begin with. Nevertheless, most of these guys have had a pretty impressive year, with plenty of miles logged and tornadoes observed. The sorriest mug in the lot was me, but I won’t go into that; 2011 is almost over now, and I’m done whining. The big thing is, Ben Holcomb was visiting from Oklahoma, and that seemed like a good reason for all of us to get together and hang out for the evening.

The Walldorff is becoming a tradition for us, and it’s not a bad one. The place has award-winning craft brew. The cuisine, made from scratch using local produce, meats, and dairy products, is also fabulous, but the beer is the main draw. Not that this is a hard-drinking bunch; they’re actually pretty conservative. But they do enjoy the Bee Sting Ale, one of the many superb craft brews turned out by Sam, the Dorff’s world-class brewmeister.

As for me, I opted for the Cobain IPA with its double-bitter blast of mega-hops and roast malt. It was the first beer I had ordered at the place since I joined its pub club a couple months ago, and I figured that it was time I finally took advantage of my member’s discount. I expected a nice price break. What I didn’t anticipate was the 24-ounce mug that the waitress set in front of me. It was big enough to generate its own lake breeze, and I could see surf breaking against the brim. Good grief. At 8.5 ABV, the Cobain is a potent brew, and all I wanted was a modest glass. I just can’t knock off such stuff with impunity anymore like I used to. Out of shape, out of practice, and getting older. Oh, well.

It was great to see all the guys, though we missed Kurt Hulst, who had to work. There’s nothing more interesting than storm chasers talking shop, at least as far as other chasers are concerned, and this year afforded plenty of notes to compare. Ben, Bill, and Tom had been on the May 24 Chickasha tornado, a particularly violent beast that may be upgraded to EF-5. Seems that it pitched a Ford F-150 pickup truck 800 yards–nearly half a mile. It’s hard to fathom that kind of power.

But enough. It’s late, this recorder is tired, and it’s time I put this post to rest. Till next time, gents: L’chaim!

Snowfalls that paralyzed entire regions. A record-breaking tornado season. An unrelenting summer heat dome that baked much of the nation for weeks on end, coupled with disastrous drought conditions in the southwest. That has been our weather year 2011 to date, courtesy of its La Nina, which commenced in June of 2010 and ended last April.

In another month, we can kiss the whole mess good-bye and good riddance. It’s not the kind of year a body wants to see repeated anytime soon. But with yet another La Nina winter shaping up, chances are that’s what we’ve got in store. In its typical terse language, NOAA’s Enso Cycle: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions sums things up thus:

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The United States needs another La Nina right now the way a sick drunk needs another bottle of Boone’s Farm. We’re still reeling from the previous episode, and now here comes round two. While no one can predict with certainty how it’s going to play out, the generalities are these:

• The north-central CONUS and portions of the Great Lakes down through the Ohio Valley are likely to see colder and wetter conditions.

• The south and southwest can expect warmer and drier weather–not welcome news to those living in West Texas and other places that have already endured week after rainless week this summer.

Also, while you won’t find it stated in ENSO literature, statistically, tornado outbreaks east of the Mississippi have tended to occur during La Nina springs. Whether a correlation does in fact exist, circum 2011 certainly seems to corroborate the notion.

Let’s hope that this new player turns out to be La Nina Lite in terms of its impact. I can’t imagine that it will be as nasty as its predecessor, but anything is possible. We’re only getting started, and already the Northeast has gotten clobbered with a record-setting winter storm. The plus side is, parts of the drought-stricken West have received a rare and welcome snowfall. That’s good, and I hope they get more precipitation, lots more, be it snow or rain.

For those of you who pray, this new La Nina is something to enter in your prayer list and keep an eye on. This winter could be another bad one, and storm chasers may once again have their hands full next spring. Let’s hope that Dixie Alley experiences nothing like what it did this year. We’ll find out five or six months from now.

The Seasonal Grille in downtown Hastings, Michigan, is a great place to eat, and if you’re a musician, also a great place to play. I’ve done several gigs there over the past year, and from the start I’ve appreciated the owner, Justin Straube, and his crew as people who genuinely enjoy the music, and who treat musicians well. Perhaps that has something to do with a mutual respect among artists, because the fare that Justin serves up is just that: culinary art. I continue to be amazed that food as superb as what you’ll find at the Seasonal Grille comes at such an affordable price.

But enough of my touting the Grille. Let me switch to talking up my friend Francesca Amari. I met her on a big band gig four or five years ago, and we’ve played together ever since as opportunity has presented itself. Francesca is more than a great vocalist and gifted national cabaret artist: she is also an engaging, well-loved performer who projects a wit and sweetness that are totally authentic. In a word, she shines. She loves her audience, her audience loves her, and as a bandmate, she’s just plain fun to work with.

So you see, you have lots of incentive to come hear Francesca and the band, including moi, at the Seasonal Grille two weeks from now on Friday, November 4. We’ll be there with a full rhythm section consisting of Dave DeVos on bass, Bobby Thompson on drums, and Mark Kahny playing keyboards. This is a more ambitious date for the Grille than the piano–sax duos that I normally do there. I’m pleased that Justin was open to my suggestion to bring in Francesca, who will be visiting Grand Rapids that week. This event will be something more than background music for diners, so I hope you’ll come join us. If you enjoy live jazz and show tunes, I can guarantee you a great evening.

Here are all the details in one compact call-out:

Francesca Amari and Friends

Place: The Seasonal Grille

Date & Time: Friday, November 4, from 6:00–9:00 p.m.

Phone: (269) 948-9222

Address: 152 West State Street, Hastings, MI (right across from the courthouse square)

The band will also be playing the previous evening, Thursday, November 3, at One Trick Pony in Grand Rapids. Downbeat for that gig is 8:00 p.m., and Wright McCargar will be filling the keyboard chair. That will be another fun night, so if you can’t make one, then make the other.

See you in two weeks!

I don’t normally post twice in the same day, but I thought I’d share this photo. I took it this last Saturday, October 8, on the island in Grand Ledge, Michigan. Autumn was at its peak, and this shot captures well the flamboyance of this past, spectacularly beautiful week. Click on the image to enlarge it, then lose yourself in the almost overwhelming collage of color.

Last weekend my best male friend, Dewey (aka Duane, aka The Scurvy Rascal), and I headed up to a hunting camp in the backwoods of Kalkaska, Michigan, for a weekend retreat. It was a time of refreshing for both of us: a time of reconnecting and confirming our friendship after a season, for each of us, of being hammered on by life; a time of drinking good craft beer and Scotch whiskey, and eating steaks cooked over an open fire; a time of hunting, and shooting clays, and blasting away with assorted pistols, including my favorite, a model 1911 .45; and a time of prayer, and reading the Bible, and talking about our passion for God, our beloved women, and life in general. A good, good time.

I drove up to Dewey’s home in Stanton Thursday evening. My laptop came with me, but I had suspended my data account with Verizon, and for some reason I was unable to access Duane’s router. With storms in the forecast, naturally I wanted to know what the radar had to show. So Dewey pulled up KGRR on his laptop, and Bingo! A nice line was moving toward Stanton and looked to arrive within a half-hour.

What the heck. I hopped in my car and took off, intent on finding a picturesque sweep of open landscape where I could watch the storm move in. As you can tell from the images on this page, I found one.

The storm was not nearly as formidable as it looks. It provided a nice bit of wind and a brief downpour; mostly, though, it was beautiful and offered a treat for the eyes. The setting sun filtered in low behind the cloud base, shining its rose-colored light through a curtain of rain and illuminating the backsides of gray, steamy towers.

But why am I talking like this? Here, see for yourself. The photos are in sequence; click on them to enlarge them, and enjoy the view.

Gone, all gone. The hummingbirds that kept my balcony abuzz with aerial entertainment and me constantly replenishing their nectar supply have departed for the winter.

In my post last month on the hummers, I speculated whether they would depart in a matter of weeks or mere days. As it turns out, the latter proved true. Just a couple days later, I filled the feeder with fresh nectar and hung it out beneath the eaves outside my sliding glass door, but there were no takers. All day I waited for even a single bird to show. The weather had turned gray and damp, and I thought that maybe the little guys were hunkering down until the sun poked through. But nope, no hummers. Not that day, nor the next, nor the next.

Finally I took down the feeder. The act was my first acquiescence to the coming winter. More such concessions will follow, most of them unpleasant but a few with blithe compensations. The hummingbirds may be gone, but the chickadees and goldfinches have been showing up sporadically, making tentative inquiries into their trusty cold-season food source. It is about time for me to set up their feeding station and reassure them. The birds that overwinter in Caledonia, Michigan, have a friend in me and a haven out on my deck. For the price of a 25-pound sack of black oil sunflower seed and a few pounds of thistle seed, the sparrows, finches, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and other winged guests brighten the wintry days with birdsong and a flurry of feathery action–especially the finches, which show up in droves of as many as 15 and appear to have no shutoff valve for their appetites. Slap some suet out on the rail and the woodpeckers will be in constant supply as well.

Right now, though, it’s still early autumn. The winter birds and I haven’t quite connected yet, and I’m contemplating the absence of hummingbirds. This page contains a couple more photos I took of them last month that didn’t turn out too shabbily. They’re my tribute to those iridescent little winged rockets that filled my summer days with many a smile. Thank you, hummers! Have a great winter, wherever you are, and I look forward to seeing you again in the spring.

Michigan is not Oklahoma. It is not even Illinois. If you’re a storm chaser who has any life experience with this state, as a few of you do besides me, you know exactly what I mean. Had Dorothy and Toto lived here instead of in Kansas, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz would never have been written. That or else author L. Frank Baum would have had to find a dfferent means of lofting his main character and her little dog somewhere over the rainbow.

Sure, Michigan gets its annual tally of tornadoes. It’s just that most of them are something less than what you’ll encounter west of the Mississippi or down south in Dixie Alley. That’s not a bad thing, given our population density. But it does require Michigan-based chasers to either travel long distances out of state or else languish from convective malnutrition.

You want to see a Michigan tornado? Okay, I’ll show you a Michigan tornado. But be forewarned, it’s not a pretty sight. It’s barely any kind of a sight at all. When I first spotted it, I wasn’t even certain it was a tornado, though after reviewing my HD clip and getting a couple of other reliable opinions, I’m now convinced. Good thing, too, because it’s all I’ve got to show for this year in terms of actually seeing a tornado. That’s pretty pathetic, considering the chase opportunities that circum 2011 has presented. But you can’t chase when your 85-year-old mother is having a knee replacement, as mine did on April 27, the day of the 2011 Super Outbreak; or when you just don’t have the money to go gallivanting freely across Tornado Alley, a reality that has badly limited me this year.

Given such circumstances, you grab what you can, where you can, when you can. July 27 was an example. Although a light risk tapped on the very westernmost edge of Michigan, my state was for the most part outlooked for nothing more than general thunderstorms. Severe weather wasn’t a concern. So imagine my surprise when I spotted distinct rotation on GR3 in a cell just to my southwest, heading ESE toward Hastings.

Grabbing my gear, I hopped in my car and headed east, setting up my laptop on the way. And what do you know! The radar didn’t lie. The storm had a large, well-defined wall cloud that I caught up with as I approached Hastings on State Road.

Since my video clip doesn’t show much in the way of structure, let me assure those of you who care about such things that this storm had good visual clues: impressive wall cloud, crisp updraft tower, and a warm RFD cascading off the back end. As I’ve already mentioned, storm motion was ESE, which corroborates my recollection of a northwest flow regime and explains why the rotation was more on the northwest part of the cell than the southwest. Also, as I recall, surface winds were from the SSW, though I can’t say how they were behaving ahead of the updraft area as I never managed to outpace the storm.

With all that said, here’s what happens in the video: Heading south behind the storm, I first spot the tornado out of my side window, which is covered with raindrops. Those somewhat obscure the funnel, but you can still make it out as a small, faint, whitish blotch connecting the cloud base to the treeline a little ways to the right of center. At this point I’m debating with myself and conclude that the feature is just scud. I park the car, zoom in on the storm and lose focus, then roll down the window and zoom back out. You’ll then see a small sapling mid-screen, and the tornado still barely visible to its right as a tiny strand of light gray condensation set against the darker background. It, translates almost imperceptibly to the right for a handful of seconds before vanishing. In my HD clip, I can make out something of an actual rope-out, but you can’t tell with YouTube.

Nevertheless, even though YouTube isn’t great for detail, I think you’ll see what I’m talking about overall. I promise you, it’s there; you just have to look closely. And use your imagination. And be highly suggestible. And believe in the Tooth Fairy. (I’ve also got some clips of Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster that you may take an interest in, but those are for another time.)

The tornado doesn’t appear in the day’s storm reports, and I don’t believe the supercell that produced it ever got severe-warned. I think I was the only chaser on the darn thing, at least from my side of the state. I did report the wall cloud to GRR. I never bothered with the tornado because it was there and gone before I’d made up my mind what it was. It certainly was an anemic little puke, and I’m not sure whether to feel grateful that I scored at least one tube this year or to feel mortified about even claiming it. I almost felt sorry for the poor thing, and if I could have, I’d have taken it home and cared for it until it was healthy, and then released it under some nice, beefy updraft tower while strains of “Born Free” played in the background.

Go ahead and laugh, but I’m probably the only chaser in Michigan who got video of this tornado. Then again, that’s nothing to brag about, particularly in a year when so many chasers have captured videos of violent, mile-wide monsters. It’s just, like I said, all I’ve got to show. Yeah, I was there with my buddies right by the airport when the April 22 Saint Louis tornado hit, but none of us actually saw a funnel. I doubt anyone did after dark in all that rain. So July 27 is it for me, my sole visual record. Mine, all mine. Bob’s tornado. I’ve assigned it an F6 on the original Fujita scale, F6 being a hypothetical rating associated with “inconceivable damage.” That description fits perfectly, as this tornado was practically hypothetical, and it’s inconceivable to me that it could have damaged much of anything. Maybe snatched up an ill-fitting toupee, but that’s about it.

So there you have it: a genuine Michigan tornado. Now you know what storm chasing is like here in my state. It’s just another of the great perks that this supercell haven has to offer besides its economy.

I will say this: we do have fantastic craft beer.

Waterspouts were in the marine forecast for Lake Michigan today. For that matter, they’re still there through tomorrow. But while people on the west side of the pond witnessed a few spouts, they didn’t materialize here on the Michigan shore.

With a closed upper low retrograding to the southwest and a persistent land breeze pushing convergence well offshore, out over the middle of the lake, any waterspouts that formed were far out of view from Michigan eyes. From the South Haven beach where Nick Nolte and I were hanging out, I could see a line of low towers pushing up over the waters 20 or 30 miles to west, moving ever-so-slowly to the northwest. The only Michiganians who might have seen a spout were boaters.

Sigh … I got up bright and early and arrived at the beach around 8:00 a.m., but the waterspouts eluded me. Nothing new there. I have yet to see a spout, but I live in hope.

The clouds over the lake were pretty, though, lit by the morning sun. I snapped a few photos just to show I was there, paying my waterspout dues. I figure that if I keep slipping tokens into the slot, pretty soon I’m bound to come up with a winner. Meanwhile, a few pics on a cool, moody September morning on the lakeshore aren’t a bad compensation prize.

Welcome to September Land. It’s not a location you can pinpoint on any map, but it exists just the same. It’s a place of being; a juncture of time and mood; a coming-of-age of the summer when the sun’s lengthening rays gild the late-day hills, clown-colored maples stipple the forests, and yellow hues infiltrate the long, green rows of corn. September Land is where the year goes to receive its golden crown of wisdom; and where, as the hazy, blue sky of early autumn stretches, glowing, over meadows filled with asters and birdsong, you and I arrive to contemplate with nostalgia the months that lie behind us, and to quietly adjust our souls for the ones to come.

Now is the season of the gentians. Here in mid-September, they dot the wetlands with pointilistic splashes of purest blue, as if God had strewn pieces of sky like confetti over the fens.

I love the deep purple asters, the burnished goldenrods, and the bright, butter-yellow wild snapdragons. I’ve been a sucker for wildflowers ever since I can remember. But of all the autumn flowers, I like the gentians best. A number of species inhabit my state of Michigan, but the fringed gentian is the one I see most often, and the one I fell in love with as a boy roaming through the wetlands of southern Kent County.

The fringed gentian opens only in the sun. On bright days, it quietly unfurls its cerulean gown, and, like a shy young woman unaware of her own breathtaking beauty, captures the eye and heart of every beholder.

Among the many who, over the years, have been smitten by the gentian was the 19th-century poet William Cullen Bryant. Like me, he sought for words that could pay adequate tribute to the gentian’s loveliness, and set them down in his jewel-like poem, “To the Fringed Gentian”:

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And coloured with the heaven’s own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com’st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

Here in Caledonia, Michigan, the woods of September Land are not bare nor are the birds yet flown. As I write, the hummingbirds still flit about the feeder out on my balcony. But frost has already visited counties to the north, and in these shortening days I, like Bryant, sense that “the aged year is near his end.”

Yesterday, Lisa and I enjoyed a spontaneous picnic out at Gun Lake State Park. With Labor Day behind us, the crowds of summer were gone and we had the park to ourselves. We sat at a picnic table, eating and talking and watching a great blue heron patrol the shoreline a stone’s throw away. Then, after strolling a bit through the southern tip of the park’s peninsula, we hopped into the car and headed back toward Caledonia. However, I had one stop-off to make in Middleville: a small but diverse prairie fen on the south end of the town.

While Lis drowsed off in the car, I hiked down the trail into the fen with my camera to photograph fringed gentians. With the sun waning and occasionally disappearing behind tufts of cumulus, many of the gentians had closed. But a few flowers remained open. I set up my tripod next to a likely looking cluster and began snapping photos. This page contains a few of them. Click on the images to enlarge them.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow,” said Jesus. “They don’t work themselves to a frazzle, nor do they weave clothes for the wearing. Yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his splendor was not arrayed like these humble wildflowers.” (Matthew 6:28–29, my rendering.)

I suspect that if gentians had been at his disposal, Jesus would have pointed to them as his object lesson of the grace God bestows on quiet, lowly hearts that look to him. In these times of great national and worldwide distress, may you and I, like the gentians, learn to turn our heads upward with trust and a willingness to let God determine for us what life is truly about–and in so doing, find a peace rooted in something, in Someone, far more steadfast than the changing seasons of this world.