All,
You could just feel it in the air today. People were a little bit happier, the wind felt more refreshing than normal, and the fish that feed at most people's front doors seem to realize that it would soon be time to retreat back to the rivers. I think it took a trip to the suburbs of Milwaukee this weekend to really see how the rain/tornadoes/floods have affected the state, despite leaving a house that has battled the weather for much of the last 2 weeks. So....Reagan, the kids, my parents, and I all navigated through a few detours on our way to Milwaukee. Unfortunately, due to the trip being so long, we never took in some of the worst sites that were just a few miles off of our path: Parkersburg (or sadly what is left after the monster F-5 tornado a few weeks back), Cedar Falls/Waterloo flooding, Cedar Rapids flooding, I-Cubs baseball stadium. So just how bad is the weather here in Iowa and why is it so bad? Well, I tried to dig up some facts...
It all started this past winter with all of the snow we got. Iowa averages 32 inches of snow, but towns like Ottumwa got over 70 inches this past year. I know for those of you who like to ski or live in the mountains, this sounds like a good base for a nice ski run, but for Ottumwa, its called "School in June and babies in September" (hopefully, I don't have to explain the timeline on that one). As I mentioned before, we had 4 snow days, 4 early outs, and 4 late starts. We once had 8 straight school days without the same time-schedule two days in a row. At our house, we had snow hit our deck in the middle of November and we decided not to scoop it off. In March, we finally cleared the snow off of our deck and saw our deck for the first time since that mid-November snow. It didn't even have time to melt during this past winter! Needless to say, all of this snow made for a long winter and a lot of anxious teachers/students/residents of Iowa. We were all looking forward to a great Spring and Summer when it finally began in mid-April. This hope was despite the weather forecasters reminding us that the winter snow was the most since 1993, ironically the famous "year of the flood". Spring in Iowa usually leads to a tornado or two, but as 2008 has showed us, Iowa weather was doing everything to the max. A tornado almost wiped out the small town of Parkersburg (small, but still 4 times the size of Pisgah!). Then a tornado almost hit Pisgah, but again, sadly, it hit a boy scout camp instead and killed 4 scouts and injured countless others. Several people on this email list live in that area and know many of the rescuers and how heroic they were on that night. As for Reagan and I, we stayed up until 4:30 a.m. monitoring our sump pump. We were just 4 days removed from bailing water from our sump pump to a nearby drain for 50 straight minutes using just our 4 hands and 3 plastic coffee cans(good thing my parents give us their coffee cans and drink tons of coffee!). We had saved our basement from massive flooding that Sunday morning, so we weren't about to let it get destroyed in the middle of the night while we slept. Using 2 sump pumps, one indoors and one outdoors in our pond that we could probably stock with walleye and pike on most nights this year, we were able to save our basement again. And we have been dry ever since. Des Moines has not been as lucky as they evacuated parts of downtown and Iowa cities followed suit. So, after all that snow, even more rain has turned Iowa into the 6th Great Lake and put 83 of our 99 counties on the federal disaster list (Congrats to the lucky 16...you will get no money from the government!). We have had almost 9 inches of rain in June alone and we only average 7 inches for the month (and only 34 for the year). Some cities actually have their year's worth of moisture already! As for tornadoes, even the national news are starting to notice a strange year. There have been 115 deaths related to tornadoes this year, but we>only average 62 per year. This is only the 3rd time the U.S. has seen over 100 deaths since 1974 (the year of the biggest 2-day outbreak of tornadoes ever). If we see 20 more deaths this year, it will be the most deaths since 1974. So why all the rain and tornadoes?? Actually, scientists are not blaming it on global warming, but something a little less talked about: La Nina. Not "El Nino", but La Nina has caused this stranger weather pattern. As for the deaths, the tornadoes have hit more populated areas this year, more people live in mobile homes now (7.6% now compared to 3% in 1974), and the stats are skewed due to the Feb. 5th outbreak of tornadoes that saw 87 tornadoes kill 56 people across the U.S. (that is 8% of our average YEARLY tornadoes in ONE DAY, and virtually our ENTIRE YEARLY AVERAGE OF DEATHS due to tornadoes!). When it is all said and done, it is just another year with strange natural events causing death and sadness across our nation. Many will argue over the cause, but hopefully all will try to make our communities safer, more indestructible, and remember those who were hurt or killed in these weather events.
As for us, we are just glad we have made it through the first 6 months of weird weather without any damage or injury. We lost a lot of sleep this past month worrying about our basement, but in the end it didn't flood and that puts us in the minority here in Des Moines and Iowa. And I have yet to fulfill my lifelong dream of seeing a tornado and going storm chasing, but at times like these, I wonder why I would even want to. God has blessed us so far this year and we pray that he continues. One thing we know to be a guarantee: Although this week's forecast is for dry 78 degree weather basically all week, we will soon see more strange weather this year and the news media will still cover it as it is always a captivating story. I just hope Iowa gets out of the news soon. Sunny and 80 doesn't make for exciting news and Iowa doesn't need any excitement right now. Neither do I....I am ready to start enjoying my "summer free of grad school". Take care and stay dry this week.
Love&Prayers,
Ben
Some interesting things to leave you with:
1. So have you seen the picture of the "Little Sioux tornado" come through your email yet?? Well, it wasn't a tornado, nor was it near Little Sioux. Click on this site to see where the picture was really taken and what it is a picture of (hint: the picture is real and really from Iowa)http://www.meteorologynews.com/2008/06/14/fake-tornado-photograph-falsely-attributed-to-boy-scout-camp-storm/
2. Also, want to know where Little Sioux is in relation to Pisgah, the great little town many of the Barrys grew up in/near? This site shows lots of tornado and radar pics, some showing you that the tornado was actually very close to Pisgah. By my estimates, the tornado came within 8 miles of our old house.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/crnews/display_story.php?wfo=oax&storyid=15319&source=0 (Thanks to Brother Doug for the above 2 links)
3. Finally, a great site for national and local>weather is simply "http://www.weather.com/" If you put your zip code in at the top of the page, you can get local information and radar. If you click on the radar, you can interact even more by seeing time lapse and zooming in practically on your house.
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