Gratuitous postcard: How's the weather where you are?

tornado! circa 1925-1938, probably near Casper, Wyoming

This postcard was in a batch of snapshots, studio portraits and photo postcards I bought yesterday at auction... I spent less than I thought I'd have to, and, in the process, made a couple of antique dealers upset that they'd missed the lot.

The thing is, I usually don't buy old photos, straight, because I have no idea who these people are, and I feel guilty about letting these strangers into my family's space. I also wonder how it can happen that so many personal items show up for sale at so impersonal a setting as a consignment auction. It just seems wrong, somehow.

Still, this particular photo postcard made me stop and think about how lucky we've been, this past season. Our weather conditions have not exactly been great, but at least we've been spared the worst of everything. To the north of us, in Mercer County, IL, the ice and winds took down dozens of the poles supporting power lines, phone lines, etc, leaving the entire of the county without light, heat, or regular communication (even some of the cellular phone service, I'm told, was disrupted by the ice on the antennae).

To the south, in Arkansas, sections of towns were leveled by what was probably a cluster of tornadoes like the one in the photo.

Thus far, all we've suffered in Monmouth, from the weather, is occasional inconvenience.

And for that, I'm grateful.