respublica

More bad weather on the way

This has been a scary year for weather. High winds, ice, snow, torrential rains all worked together to bring down trees, cause accidents, and make just doing things difficult. Now we hear that tonight we stand a good chance of experiencing large hail, damaging winds, flooding downpours and tornadoes.

Frankly I don't believe any of us here can bear one more downed tree. Trees are lovely, but boy do they cause problems when they fall without warning. Our campus security camera by the chapel caught the most recent huge oak falling Saturday night during a wind and rain storm. It slowly, almost in slow motion, began listing to the west as the huge root ball slowly raised up out of the ground. Then slowly, slowly the tree dropped to the ground.

What was odd was that it fell to the west when the winds were coming from that direction.

The chapel tree

Yesterday a tree company came and cut up and hauled away, the big Oak tree which fell next to the chapel during the Saturday night wind storm. I got a few pictures before they began and that tree was massive and came right out to the ground. It's just amazing it did not hit the chapel windows.

The root ball, huge

Another weekend another tree fall

This has been one crazy 2019. Since it began, almost every weekend has brought strong weather which has caused all kinds of problems. Today is no different. We had storms over night with rain and wind and falling temperatures which again brought down a big tree on the seminary campus. This time it just missed the chapel. Praise God for the way it fell.

It seems these trees just don't crack and fall over, they get lifted out from their very roots. A similar thing happened the end of January to a tree next door to our house and fell onto our cars and part of the house. Another fell next to another faculty house last month, and others in more open spaces. 

This is one of those weeks when...

I am having trouble figuring out just what day it is. So many things are being crammed into each day that each day seems two days long. But, yes, it's Wednesday. I'm pretty sure. Today will be no different with the added forecast of up to 45 miles per hour winds this afternoon. After seeing how wind can take down big trees, I'm not comfortable with windy forecasts.

And as an update for this week:

Mattresses 38

Ladders 32

One of each has fallen already this week.

Laudamus at Holy Cross

Concordia Seminary's select choir put on a concert at Holy Cross in Collinsville yesterday afternoon and it was beautiful. Those voices were so true and clear, just a gift to listen to. There were many people in attendance which was gratifying, you just never know what will happen at 3 on a Sunday afternoon, especially with the NCAA basketball tournament going on and storms predicted. 

The storms came after most people were home or on their way and Collinsville was treated once again with more than one gorgeous rainbow.

This photo was taken by someone who works at the Collinsville library which is on the right in the picture. The rainbow completely covers Main Street.

Bombs and cyclones oh my

This winter has been ridiculous but naming all the storms has gotten out of hand. Today we're hearing that a rare Bomb Cyclone is likely to hit Colorado. What the heck does that even mean?

Get this. It's not made up, but a scientific phenomenon that is the aftermath of Bombogenesis. Which doesn't tell us much except that the people of Colorado need to know what's in store rather than being frightened by weird words. So the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tells us this Bombogenesis is a popular term that describes a midlatitude cyclone that rapidly intensifies. A rapid pressure drop of at least 24 millibars.

They also look ahead to blizzard warnings bringing heavy snow and 50-70 mph winds.

So what about us hear in the midwest? We're forecast high winds and heavy rain beginning this afternoon.

 

Another lousy weather weekend

We've had enough bad winter weather on weekends this year that each new forecast has begun to make me pretty nervous. We've had bad ice, snow, wind, bitter cold. Today I'll confess to being anxious about the strong thunderstorms this morning followed by 50 mph winds. After seeing the damage done by the 60 foot tree which fell across our fence and onto our cars and part of the house, I'm more aware of what could happen.

I've been looking around the perimeter of the house and there are big trees everywhere. One in the back yard is right next to the power line. And not just any power line but one connected to that big power canister.

If Dale was here he'd tell me not to worry, but he isn't so there's that.

Weather! One more thing to worry about

Two Fox2 reporters were talking about all the snow the upper midwest has had this winter. One told the other he hopes all that snow doesn't cause flooding in St. Louis this sprAing because it will come down this way.

As if this winter hasn't been miserable enough, he's pointing us to what could be a bad spring.

The coldest March 4th in five years

After yesterday's nasty snow, we woke up to temperatures in the single digits, 3 degrees when I got up at 5. It hasn't been this cold on this date since 2014. It's deceivingly cold because the sun is shining brightly under bright blue skies. But boy is it cold. The snow won't be melting anytime soon. I will say, though, that the roads are in better condition than we have a right to expect. I had to drive over to the Metro East for an 8 a.m. dentist appointment in Maryville, actually a specialist in root canals, and was worried about this most of yesterday. Should I cancel or should I take a chance on the roads?

I decided to go for it and get this tooth done. So I plotted out how I was going to do this. I didn't want to drive over to Maryville in the dark and not be able to see if the road surfaces were clear. But, learned that sunrise would be at 6:28 which meant not leaving at a time when the sun would blind me in the middle of the windshield. I left at 6:15 and that turned out to be perfect. Light enough to see, but not sun at windshield level. Roads were fine and the traffic hadn't gotten heavy.

Now all done and back on campus. Oh, and, this is a great dentist, the new technology for doing this procedure blew me away. I do have to go back in one month and get the second side of this tooth root canal-ed, but I'm not fretting about it after today.

Even better, my blood pressure is excellent.

 

This weather...seriously

Another weekend of winter weather. The snow has been coming down since around 6 and really covered up the surfaces fast. Very early on news reports showed, once again, massive traffic shut downs because a tractor trailer crashed. Maybe two of these in different parts of the area. Our issue this time is that Dale has a flight out of St. Louis around noon and the highways aren't in the best shape for getting him there. And it was my job to drive him there and frankly, I've been in a panic state about this since Friday.

I don't do well on snow and ice covered roads, they make me a wreck. But I am so thankful for our seminary environmental services director who came by and said he'd take Dale.  We only have one car since the tree fell on Dale's car last Sunday so he wouldn't have been able to take my car and just leave it at the airport for 10 days.

I"m supposed to have a dentist appointment in Collinsville at 8 tomorrow morning but I just may try and reschedule that. By morning it will be 5 degrees and roads will have re-frozen.

I'm a coward when it comes to St. Louis interstates in bad weather.