respublica

Flood economics

The flood waters swamping Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri are doing much more than forcing people out of their homes. Millions of acres of the best farm land are underwater, a catastrophe which will affect consumers all across the country in the coming year. 

While major cable news channels obsess over Obama's decision not to take public money for his campaign, the part of the country which will have a lot to do with rising food prices, gas prices etc, slowly drowns. 

"You may not load much corn meal or soybean oil into your shopping cart, but you'll pay more for eggs and meat in coming months. Those flooded fields mean that food-price inflation, which has been running at more than 5 percent, will remain a front-burner issue well into next year.

"Corn is the world's most important food crop, and the U.S. is the world's most important producer and most important exporter," said Bill Nelson, a commodities analyst at Wachovia Securities. "Nothing else affects food prices like corn does."

The price of eggs, the price of poultry, the price of beef, the cost of ethanol...all heading up. 

His first tornado

Yesterday the MAtH (man about the house) had to drive up to the south Chicago suburbs in order to preach at his home congregation's anniversary today.  He left later than he'd originally planned, as usual, and found himself on Interstate 57 in Will County at just the same time as a tornado.  Fortunately he was just at the point of the last Illinois rest stop before the Chicago area.  He and others pulled in to escape strong lightning and torrential downpours when someone in the crowd pointed to the western sky.  A tornado.  Coming right at them.  Someone asked the rest stop manager if the place had a basement and sure enough, it did.  They all trooped down into the small utility basement and waited it out.

When things finally ended after 15 or 20 minutes most everyone thought it was ok to try getting back on the highway.  No sooner had the cars entered I-57 then the state police made them turn around in their same lanes and exit the wrong way onto two lane roads.  It turns out the highway was littered with downed power lines and the remains of shattered tractor trailer trucks.  Dale ended up winding his way to Homewood on surface streets, getting to his sister's much much later than planned.  Did he have a camera with him?  Oh no.

WGN news and the Tribune in Chicago put up a video showing the exact place he was at when the tornado hit.

Where not to be today

All of a sudden the heat is on across much of the eastern half of the country. 

The Washington D.C. area will see temperatures near 100 with a heat index of 110 or higher. 

Similar temperatures will show up in NYC.  How will this affect Big Brown and his bid for the Triple Crown this afternoon?

St. Louis will be in the 90's and very humid after yesterday's downpour of two inches in an hour.

Storm clouds seen from above

St. Louis must have gotten hit with some nasty weather today.  We flew from Baltimore to St. Louis early this evening and the entire eastern half of the country is being inundated with rain and storms.  As we got closer to St. Louis we descended into the clouds, but, saw the sun for the first time in days.  These were some clouds hanging over the area.

5.4 and then 4.6

At 4:37 this morning loud creaking and shuddering woke me up, the ceiling fan sounded like it was being twisted into bits.  "What the heck was that?", I asked.  Dale's voice answered, "Earthquake."

Sure enough it was an earthquake, 5.4 on the Richter scale, strong enough to bring down chunks of concrete on at least one St. Louis overpass and some buildings in downtown.  Now that it's light, people might find other evidence of damage, nothing major is being reported so far, but it was the strongest one we've lived through.

Updated.  At 10:15 the area felt a fairly lengthy aftershock measured at 4.6.  Quite the day.

Emporia's storm

Watching the high winds and lightning last night here in Emporia Kansas was enough to know there would have to have been some damage somewhere.  This morning while at my mother's I walked through the old cemetery which borders her complex and saw what looked to be tree fall-out from either wind sheer or lightning.  A lot of fall-out.

It makes me feel right at home, seeing all these fallen trees.  Just like being back on the campus of Concordia Seminary, a place which has seen at least 3 dozen big trees fall in the past year.

I'm guessing this was mostly lightning.  A lot of lightning.

Thunder and lightning and rain...oh my

We were jarred awake at 5 this morning by thunder and lightning.  While reading the paper at 6 there came a tremendous flash and deafening crash, a function of thunder and lightning coming at the exact same time.  Wow, that seemed awfully close, but it was dark and raining, hard to see anything out the window.  But, as I drove off to church and made the first turn next to the park-like greenspace next to the house...whoa

The road was covered by a good part of a big old Oak tree which got hit by the lightning.

It shook the street lamp out of its moorings.

It is easy to see the path the lightning traveled, right straight down the center of the trunk.

These two huge sections of trunk fused together over the years.

The scorch mark left by the lightning lines the middle of the wood.

By mid-afternoon, a couple of seminary students came along and moved everything off the road so cars could get by.  Brad, with the chain saw, used to do this sort of thing for a living, and Greg works a part time job with the grounds people.  They did a great job.

I've never lived in a place where trees fall like they do on the Concordia Seminary campus.  During the two years we've been here, we've seen probably 25 to 30 huge oaks come down during storms or for no obvious reason.  We've lived in places where limbs fall down, but never huge trees in such number.   Taking a walk requires a bit of vigilance.

If it rains on Easter...

...will the next 7 Sundays see rain?  That's one of those old "saws" we've heard many times over the years.

Does the same apply to snow?  That's what we had this morning and throughout the day, snowflurries alternating with rain.

Sun.  Let's see some sun.

The wisdom of man

Headline in today's P-D:  Earth succumbs in 7.50 billion years

Or variously: Kissing the earth good-bye in about 7.59 billion years

Then an immediate thought:  Matthew 24:36  "No one knows about that day or hour, not the angels in heaven, not even the Son, but only the Father."

View from the front door part 2

It is still snowing, hours and hours of snow leading the highway DOTs to beg people to stay home and off the roads so they can make some attempt to clear them.

3 p.m.  The end has to be near.