Earthquakes in divers places, fires, floods, whirlwinds, great hail, the sea heaving itself beyond its bounds, wars and rumors of wars... yeah, it's all happening, but (as my mom likes to say) it's been happening for a very long time. Her mom used to tell her that same thing when she was a little girl and, who knows, maybe her mother's grandmother used to say the same.
Stepping back, however, and observing a few recent points could be interesting.
For instance, did you know that there was actually a storm in China that produced 80 lbs hailstones? (The Book of Revelation measured them as a talent, which is 75 lbs, btw, and which has always been thought to be a physical impossibility). These ice boulders plunged through roofs and stripped huge branches off of trees, leaving the area where they struck looking like a war zone… and I worry about dime sized hail and my garden plants?
Closer to home, we could look at floods as another example that, just maybe, things are a little different than they were 100 years ago.
I live in the Midwest, between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers... on very high ground, thank you very much. During "rainy season" (which typically starts in earnest around May 1st) flooding is common enough. If you're smart, you just make sure that you don't live, work or frequently pass through any major flood plains.
For instance, we have a creek on our farm, a beautiful and meandering little thing. Back East they'd call it a brook. It is spring fed, runs year round and is utterly lovely. During the summer you can watch the little fish, crawdads and skeeters flit about in it. The wildlife comes from far and near to enjoy refreshing drinks from its clear waters.
After a good rain, however, while much of the local farmland is draining into it, it becomes torrential and raging. You can hear the water pounding in rapids down it for quite a distance away. It is still beautiful, but in an amazing and awesome way!
We've had several bridges over this "brook". They're always so lovely to sit on while watching the gentle style waters drift away. In the beginning, they were rather crudely made of fallen trees, though (when those washed away) we soon graduated to 2x4's and planks... then 4x4's and planks... each of which were also effectively washed away in the subsequent and inevitable floods. Finally, desiring something a little more permanent, we built a more elaborate structure, raised high over the creek with expanded walkways on either side. We call it "Clarke's Bridge"... because Clarke built it for us... and, so far, it has endured.
But back to the main subject at hand: While we may have lost a few bridges due to a rookie short-sightedness, we would never have built our home anywhere near such an unpredictable water source.
Flooding on the big rivers is also interesting to me as it never happens all at once. Unless you’re living in the town of Agency, where “it floods ever' time some un' goes an’ spits up-river,” as the locals like to say… then, elsewhere, it has to be the perfect storm of events. Huge snows in the north with similarly soggy conditions further down the main waterways, followed by unusually heavy spring rains.
Since a huge percentage of the country's rivers eventually empty into the mighty Mississippi, it only stands to reason that it will occasionally flood. In fact, we had a huge flood in 1993. These floods are generally noted as "10 year floods"... "50 year floods"... or "100 year floods" for the really big ones.
The flood of 1993 was a "1,000 year flood", meaning that it was so rare, it only happened about once every 1,000 years. Needless to say, it broke all records in the known history of the area.
Some people like to build their homes in these areas. I guess they figure that if it only happens once a millennium, then they're probably pretty safe. Unfortunately for those folks, we had another "1,000 year flood" in 1995. The water from these floods was so high that it not only covered all the low lying farmland, but it washed away centuries old cemeteries and threatened national monuments.
One such place was the St. Louis Arch and its accompanying subterranean museum.
The arch sits high above the Mississippi River and overlooks several states. It's a very impressive site... until the wind starts blowing and swaying it... while you're in it... but that's a topic for a whole other blog. The museum, though underground from the arch, also sits high above the river. In fact, if you leave the arch and walk toward the river, you will have to descend about 55 concrete stairs, cross the street and descend further past the river front area. If the river is even mildly low, you can walk across several cobblestone style, ancient looking, worn and rounded, red bricks to dip your toes into that mile wide wonder. Normally this is a relaxing area, with horse drawn carriages, riverboat attractions and barges hauling goods down the water.
In the flood of 1993, the river covered it all and came up to the top two steps on the arch grounds, threatening to spill into the museum on the other side. In 1995, it came almost as high.
Now, we have the flood of 2011, which the news is saying, is already breaking the record of 1993 and might even last into July.
Hm... one has to wonder why it's called a 1,000 year flood when it's happened 3 times in the last 20 years… unless things aren’t quite “normal”. They were calling it global warming, for a while, until some hackers exposed that the scientists behind it were manipulating the data and information fed to the public… apparently, there was big money to be had on an upcoming “carbon credit exchange” program in the stock market.
Not to be undone, or risk losing their funding, scientists then began calling it “climate change”, which conveniently covered for the corresponding global cooling trend. This much broader term, technically, happens about 4 times each year in our neck of the woods. Not to be left out, there are also the “Solar Scientists”, people who, through ice cores and mud cores and a bunch of other stuff, track the sun’s solar flare activity, which they say runs in very neat and tidy 17 year cycles. The earth goes through something like 17 years of cooling, followed by 17 years of warming… or something like. Either way, they predicted this last cycle spot on… though it still doesn’t explain 3 – 1,000 year floods inside such a short span of time.
In the end, I guess it's just been a big year… or two… or ten… for disasters, so much so, that it's getting difficult to keep track of them all, from the massive earthquakes, tsunamis, record breaking tornadoes and fires, wars and oil spills and floods.
It’s all enough to make a person want to live on high ground.
…and have a bit of food stored.
…or maybe even build bomb shelter!
Honestly, I might pass on the bomb shelter.
…but I think I’ll buy another can of peaches.
Yup, yup, yup. And, my house is on high ground, too.
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