Thanks for spending part of Ash Wednesday with us. Today’s report includes a couple of images from the Comic Cowboys parade and our first “Barkley-ism” section (but certainly not our first Charles Barkley quote).

Thanks for reading,

Ike

Yesterday’s weather

I hope everybody was holding on to something yesterday afternoon and evening. We were pleased to hear a few reports of trees that are still standing in some locations …

Storms came through the state overnight and into the early hours this morning. But it was the high winds ahead of the storm you can blame for toppling so many of the trees and power lines. By 10 p.m. the state already had more than 100,000 customers without power, according to PowerOutage.us.

AL.com’s Howard Koplowitz reports that a brush fires were caused by downed power lines in parts of central Alabama ahead of the storms.

Check al.com/weather for the most recent weather news and forecasts.

Decatur to D.C.

If you watched President Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress last night, you might’ve caught a piece that included Jeff Denard of Decatur.

Denard, reports AL.com’s Howard Koplowitz, attended the speech as a guest of First Lady Melania Trump.

The president shared that Denard was a 27-year worker at Nucor Steel as well as a volunteer firefighter. He said he has seven children and has cared for more than 40 foster children.

Trump was highlighting Denard while touting his heavy use of trade tariffs, which Trump said were “making America rich again and making America great again.”

Possible unemployment change

A bill that came out of the Alabama House of Representatives would tighten up a qualification for unemployment, reports AL.com’s Mike Cason.

That bill, by state Rep. Ed Oliver, a Dadeville Republican, tweaks a three-year old law that requires unemployment recipients apply for three jobs a week. The proposed bill would raise that to five. It wouldn’t apply to counties with populations less than 20,000.

It has passed a Senate committee and now goes before the full Senate for final passage.

Opponents argue that Alabama’s unemployment laws are strict enough and that some low-income job seekers without childcare or good transportation are more limited in the number of jobs they can apply for.

Qualifying unemployment applicants — who are out of work due to no fault of their own — can receive up to $275 per week for up to 20 weeks.

More Harper Lee fiction

Harper Lee will have a new book out in October, reports AL.com’s Kelly Kazek.

Lee, of course, was the Monroeville writer who became a literary legend with her 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Not long before she died, her other novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” was published.

According to publisher HarperCollins, the yet-to-be-published work includes eight short stories and is called “The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays.”

Hopefully this will be another chance to get into the mind of the famously reclusive Lee, who died nine years ago. But it won’t be her mind in recent decades.

According to the publisher, the new-to-us short stories were written before “Mockingbird.”

Today’s Barkley-ism

“Where did we get to as a country when we’re like, ‘We’re not going to the White House, we don’t like who’s in there.’ That’s just stupid.”

Leeds native and NBA legend Charles Barkely, on “The Steam Room” podcast, on teams that may boycott their White House visits because President Trump is in office.

By the Numbers

21 kilograms

That’s how much cocaine the Calera Police Department said was found on two Columbian nationals in the U.S. illegally and traveling through Alabama, according to a federal grand jury’s indictment. Investigators believe the paid was The traffic stop happened on Feb. 7.

Picture That

The Comic Cowboys shared their satirical signs during their annual Fat Tuesday parade on the final day of Mardi Gras in Mobile. (Photos by Mike Kittrell)

1/34

More Alabama News

Born on This Date

In 1951, singer/songwriter Willis Alan Ramsey of Birmingham.

The podcast