We Shall Have Weather, Whether ot Not

As I sit in my air-conditioned house with outside temps once again approaching 100' with humidity to match, I feel the need to comment on the weather we've all experienced so far this year. Since last fall, we've experienced one of the hardest winters we've had in many years. Good grief --- it's July 4th week-end, and folks are still skiing at Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra on the remaining snow from the hundreds of inches that fell. Ray Vybiral and Jeanne Edwards sent me pics of their late winter Wisconsin snows --- in May! And just this week, Jeanne sent pics and a newspaper article about the tornados in her "neighborhood". The rivers in the upper midwest are flooding due to the late season snow-melt in Montana and Wyoming --- and Canada. The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers have already caused unimaginable flood damage --- and the Missouri is now on its way to the Mississippi with even more flood waters.

The weather extremes have been mind-boggling:
Missouri has been hit with a record number of big tornados, hitting this state from west (Joplin) to east (St Louis) with destruction in many cities and towns in between. This picture of what was Joplin was submitted by Margi Bassnett Burtin, who passed thru Joplin on her way to Texas. Here in the SW corner of the Show-Me state, we've escaped the really severe weather, but we did have 27 inches of rain in less than a month, which brought Table Rock Lake to new flood levels twice in that month, and, as a result, caused severe flood damage in the entire White River basin. 3 years ago, we were told the lake experienced "the 100-year flood" --- well, guess what? This year, we had 2 more 100-year floods, both of which surpassed that of 3 years ago; and now it's a heat wave and drought.
Texas is experiencing a devastating drought thruout the state as are other areas of the south; fires in New Mexico and Arizona are destroying hundreds of thousands of acres and thousands of homes and businesses. The severe storms in the Chicago area this past week are, once again, unheard of, yet happening. The extreme heat in much of the country is causing power outages and threatening the lives of the elderly and poor, many of whom have no a/c or even fans.

I could probably go on and on, but I need to get off my soapbox. I can't imagine anyone saying, after all these terrible weather phenomena, that climate change doesn't exist.

Downers Hit by Tornado

In all my years, I don't think I can ever remember DG being hit by a tornado. I remember my mom and dad speaking of a twister going right up Main Street when they were very young, but never in my lifetime have I ever heard of this ---- until now. I received the following from Norma Deardorff Plummer on June 28:

"To you former Downers Grove residents out there -- I don't know if you are aware that a tornado went through Downers Grove last Tuesday night. We didn't have any problems on our property but there were trees down all over town. DG South HS took a big hit. John and I weren't even aware there was a big storm coming until my daughter Beth called from Oak Park as their tornado sirens had gone off. Ours never did because the tornado hadn't been recognized. Downers and Mt. Prospect were the hardest hit. Check out information on line if you're interested in further details. The town will be weeks removing all the downed trees. No human casualties have been reported."

Norma followed up with another e-mail:

"Further to my earlier email, this website gives you some interesting information. We don't live in the path (being a north sider) but still, a little too close for comfort and two of our neighbors lost big trees. One fell on the power lines but, for some reason the lines didn't come down and we were only without electricity for a few seconds. Others on the south side (including classmate Alanna Aselin Lauchle) were without power for almost two days. Thankfully the temperature has remained in the 70s."

If you're interested in visiting the website Norma mentioned above, which shows the path of this EF-1 twister, click on the title of this post.