Category: Weather

Categories
Weather

St. Louis cresting

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The Mississippi is cresting this week, barring more rain. More levees have broken, but the remaining should be stable. Now comes the clean up, as well as the decisions about what to do with Old Muddy after this event. The decisions made in the past don’t fit today’s reality.

flooded St. Louis

More on the floods and flood control at a later time, but for now:

St. Louis Flooding

Categories
Weather

Sandbagging and levee breaches

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

CNN has a summary post of the levee breaches and the state of flooding in both Illinois and Missouri, including links to videos on the levee break at Winfield. The films especially show how dangerous levee breaches can be, and why we so desperately try to prevent them.

I impulsively ran out of the house yesterday to help sandbag, only stopping to grab gloves on the way. I forgot to put on suntan lotion or a hat, and my face is pretty burned and swollen today. I won’t be going out to sandbag during the day, but plan on going out this evening when the sun is down.

There is still a threat of major flooding and levee breaches all down the Mississippi in Missouri and Illinois, so there’s still a desperate need for sandbaggers.

Categories
Climate Change Weather

Helping Hand

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Update Unfortunately, there was one levee outside of Winfield we couldn’t save.

second update Steve Ley, one of the two men in the photograph in the post, also wrote of today’s experience.

third update The Salvation Army has set up a localized fund to help flood victims in Missouri.

I wish I could say I acquitted myself well sandbagging today, but I really was a wuss.

I arrived at the high school in Winfield a little after 2 to find a bustling sandbagging operation underway. However, rather than dig in, we new volunteers had to wait in line to get a badge with picture. After over half an hour standing in the sun, the powers that be evidently decided they were in danger of losing volunteers because they let those who had ID start work.

Later, I found that the place did have prisoners from a local prison helping, so I’m assuming the security was related to them. Otherwise, our country has gotten a little too paranoid if we’re worried about protecting piles of dirt.

I partnered immediately with a man who was on his second day of sandbagging and a young woman (Breanna, who said hi in comments) who lived in the local area, both of whom had extraordinary energy, as well as being enjoyable to be around. I didn’t get a picture of the man, but I did Breanna. Behind her were twins who also partnered with us when they weren’t hauling bags to pallets.

Sandbagging

Next to us were two gentlemen who also had come up from St. Louis, Dogtown to be exact. They were a great deal of fun, and we found that we shared a lot in common, including careers in tech, and possibly even people who we mutually knew in the tech/online world. Talk about small world. I also think they bagged about 10 bags for every one I helped fill. Still, I like to think that there’s a levee somewhere, just about to fail when one last sandbag is placed on the top, keeping that last drop of water out. And I’ll have filled that bag.

Well, maybe I am being a tad fanciful.

Sandbagging

Following is a wider view of the operation. As you can see from the mounds of sandbags, people came to work, and work they did.

Sandbagging

Tonight I’m sunburned, with a headache that just won’t go away. However, I think I can drag my butt out tomorrow, early in the morning this time, and see if I can’t fill that last bag that saves that last levee.

In the meantime, the American Red Cross is out of money. Our country has had some difficult times in the last few years, people aren’t donating as much, and the result is that the American Red Cross is now having to borrow in order to help the folks in the Midwest. Not to mention that we’re only now heading into hurricane season.

I know you’re broke, I’m broke, we’re all broke and gas and food prices are horrid, but if you can see your way to dropping a few dollars into the Red Cross bin, you’d be helping a lot of people who have lost everything.

If the Red Cross is not your bag, and you want to help a more local organization, the Missouri Humane Society is known nationally for its pet recovery and sanctuary during weather events such as floods. The organization was in Iowa rescuing pets, and now is working to help people in Illinois and Missouri not only by actively rescuing pets trapped in the floods, but also by taking in pets for those who have no place to keep them.

If you can find your way to help out a little, I promise I’ll bag more sand. I’ll even name a bag after you. Who knows, maybe yours will be the bag that stopped the drop of water that saved the levee that saved the town.

Sandbagging

Categories
Photography Weather

The story, again

Update As of this afternoon, June 17, the predictions now place the crest of the flood in St. Louis on the 23rd of June, and 40 feet. The forecast is now for major flooding in our community.

Tomorrow or Thursday, I’ll grab my camera, as I head out to record yet another flood. It seems like I’m taking pictures of flooding every six months now.

A year ago the Missouri crept over its banks, sending the Mississippi higher, but not to the point of being a threat. Earlier this year, I watched as the Meramec flooded areas not two miles from my home. And now, favorite towns of mine further north—Clarksville, Winfield, Hannibal, Alton— are facing their worst threat, perhaps ever.

Flood of 2007

The main Clarksville city web site says it all, replacing the normal pages with just one picture of the downtown area, showing the river as it gets closer. First there was Wisconsin, then Iowa, now us and Illinois, as too much water drains off the land into the only place it can drain: the Mississippi.

The crest will most likely arrive on Friday for the towns up north, on Saturday for St. Louis. We’re not going to reach the same 1993 flood levels, as the Missouri isn’t as high as it was 15 years ago. It was high waters further north along the Mississippi and high waters in the Missouri, both of which converge just before the city that lead to such epic floods in St.Louis and down south. Still, we’re a scant four inches away from crossing the line from moderate to major flooding, as levees overtop up north, like dominoes falling, one after another; leaving behind a body of water that seems as surprised to see buildings in its midst as we are devastated to see it surround our homes and flow over our streets.

Meramec Flood 2008

The folks of Hannibal assure us that Mark Twain’s home is in no danger because of a levee built years ago. The same levee featured in the first story in Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America , which told of how the levee protected the business area and museums, but didn’t the homes of the poor, and how it is the poor who suffer the most in these floods. Mark Twain would not approve.

We knew this flood was coming months ago, as rains fell throughout the spring, and snow fell into up north and melted late. What can you do, though? Levees can’t be built in a month, and sandbags can only do so much. The water is the blood that flows through the veins of our land, and not only couldn’t we hold it back, we shouldn’t hold it back. All we can do is cherish the river in good times, and run for the hills in bad. Oh, and not build homes in flood plains.

I watched on TV last night as forecasters predicted that these floods will cause food prices to inflate an additional 6%. The waters have filled fields with muck and goo, unlike floods in the past that used to lay down clean, rich, top soil. We’ve contaminated the lands and the waters and the floods don’t bring the benefits the way they used to. Now, you have to have a tetanus shot just to go near the water.

Meramec flood 2008

The Army Corps of Engineers, who believe that we can engineer ourselves out of any problem, call these floods five hundred year floods because there is a .2% chance of them happening every year. I don’t think the experts really know how often these floods will come, though, because earlier this year the National Weather Service’s expert on floods in this area predicted only moderate flooding for 2008, even as we looked out the window at the rains, and one week before the Meramec floods began.

Flood of 2007

Categories
Weather Weblogging

Storms

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Dug out from a storm this week and the winds are still blowing, and the lighting still lighting up the sky and none of this has anything to do with the weather. Well, there was a storm earlier, which blew down the tree across from us. Lots of trees down online, too.

I emerged from various uninteresting things and went online this morning and found all these moods today. For instance, there’s an anti-intellectual/postmodern thing going on, links pulled together by AKMA, who attaches his own take on discussion.

I don’t know enough about postmodernism to be hostile about it, one way or another. I used to be insecure about this – now I’m glad. Ignorance really is bliss.

Jeneane’s leading the charge against the Jupiter Biz Blog conference – too many people attending too many conferences, and all of them are blogging about them, but what’s worse is their blogging about each other blogging about each other and I’m getting dizzy.

One more person writes “What’s a weblog” and I’m going to loose my cookies.

I found out I can’t use Plesk to manage accounts on the new co-op server because it’s dependent on MySQL 3.23, and we’ll be using MySQL 4.x. That’s okay, though, because we should use open source solutions like Webmin instead. Speaking of open source, from Ken’s posting today, sounds like there’s been a few trees down out in the Apache world.

Tom Shugart doesn’t think much of the heartland, or people with weight problems:

Each time I find myself back in the heartland, it seems to get worse. The food seems to get more and more tasteless and toxic, and the inhabitants more and more rotund. How can the food be so bad—and so bad for you, I wonder, in the middle of one of the richest agricultural areas in the world?

True, the small towns don’t always have the fancy cuisine, though you look about a bit and you might be surprised; and the people are just plain folks – many of them making little money because of unemployment, so they fill their diet with potatoes and pasta and Big Macs – cheap food but starchy and fattening. As Tom noted.

But one thing I’ll say about the midwest, which also include my beautiful new home, Missouri: I’ve never noticed a lack of courtesy in the people – something I found in short supply in California. Generosity, too, as several of us prepare for this weekend’s Race for the Cure, thinking how best to waddle around the 5K course.

I just had an exchange of emails with News is Free about linking directly to my photographs – that whirring sound you hear is my bandwidth being sucked dry.

Me: Don’t scrape my pages.
Them: Your RSS feed is hard to find.
Me: Autodiscovery.
Them: Human beings and handy little orange XML button.
Me: Your personal requirement does not make my courtesy into an imperative. Don’t like little orange button.

So, who is not in a pissy mood? Speak up.

At least nature always comes through: the fireflies made their debut last night. No photos – they’re camera shy. I’d send you all a bouquet of fireflies to cheer you up, but they don’t like the tiny little leashes and keep tearing off the bows. And FedEx said no way.

weeds.jpg