Verbena vortex

You may have heard that on Monday night several tornadoes swept through the Austin area. One touched down in Round Rock, a large suburb adjacent to Austin on the north. Other tornadoes hit Hutto a little farther east and then Elgin, about 20 miles east of Austin. You can learn about the damage from Austin television stations KXAN, KVUE, and KEYE. Fortunately those tornadoes seem not to have killed or seriously injured anyone, though they destroyed some homes and damaged hundreds of others in varying degrees.

With the tornadoes in mind, I took obvious liberties with the photo of the prairie verbena, Glandularia bipinnatifida, that you see above. It was the first flower of that species I found this season, on March 20, coincidentally the first day of spring. Click the thumbnail below for the non-vortexed version.

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman