Preserving History

Good news in the Enquirer on a deal reached to preserve a historic covered bridge here, the last one left in our county. It’s often visited by locals, and people in our neighborhood (including Mrs. SR013 and I) sometimes ride bicycles to it, a lovely ride down a scenic lane and along a babbling creek.

The last covered bridge in the county will be preserved

The bridge dates from the 1870s. It has been closed since it was damaged two years ago, and there were plans to build a new, stronger bridge inside it while essentially preserving only the shell. I was among hundreds of people who urged county officials to find a way to repair it that would preserve its historic structure and integrity — and now a compromise has been reached with the county engineer’s office that will do that. Nice when things work out like this!

Hoop Fever

Much is being made of the fact that four of the 16 teams left in the NCAA tournament are from Ohio – the University of Cincinnati, Xavier University (also in Cincinnati), Ohio University and Ohio State University. What many have overlooked is that two other teams in the Sweet Sixteen — Louisville and the University of Kentucky — are both only a 75-minute drive away from Cincinnati as well. For some reason, this area seems to be centerville for college hoops.

Perhaps even more astounding is the complete lack of West Coast teams in the tournament. In fact, there’s only one team still in it that’s from west of the Mississippi, and that’s Baylor, from Texas. It boils down to a very forgettable year for college basketball in the western United States, that’s for sure.

The Back Yard: A Timeline

January 2, 2012

February 10, 2012

March 10, 2012

 

 

 

 

 

April 10, 2012

The Perils of Mobile Homes in Tornado Country

Eye-opening statistics in an Enquirer article this morning about the 34 people killed by the recent tornado outbreak in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio: 24 of them (71 percent) lived in mobile homes. Also, from 1996 to 2007, 93 percent of the tornado deaths in Indiana and 73 percent in Kentucky were in mobile homes, according to the article.

I realize mobile homes are a means of providing housing for low-income folks, but in tornado country, are they really worth the risk? Shouldn’t there be higher construction standards, the way there are in California to prevent damage and loss of life due to earthquakes?

Ohio Eggs

Fresh eggs straight from the farm

I’ve criticized the food and restaurant scene here, and I think it deserves some criticism. But one also has to give credit where credit is due. We buy eggs here directly from a farm, and they are the best, most flavorful eggs we’ve ever had. I love it that they come in mixed colors – ranging from light brown to dark brown to blue – and that there are sometimes a few feathers in the carton.

But the main reason we buy them is because of their rich flavor and their big, creamy yolks. I try not to eat too many eggs, so a couple of poached eggs over toast on Sunday morning are often the only ones I have in a given week. But let me tell you: I look forward to that breakfast all week. Ohio farm eggs – yum!

Tornadoes

The storms that hit the Midwest today were awe-inspiring and frightening. They spawned something like two dozen tornadoes in a “super outbreak” that experts compared to one in 1974.

At the least, it’s reassuring that the National Weather Service can track dangerous storm cells as closely as they do, and issue updated warnings every 15 minutes. Still, there’s a random, evolving element to tornadoes that means they can appear in unpredictable places, sometimes before the authorities know they’re there.

A day in advance, we knew that a line of “unstable” tornado weather would move across our county, and approximately when, so that’s good. You can make preparations around that information – candles, lamps, food, work schedule. But whether tornadoes would actually form, and where exactly they would go, nobody knew.

It turned out that in the late afternoon today, a line of severe thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes was headed directly toward Cincinnati. When it was only 20-30 miles away, for some reason, this storm track split, and the tornadoes and high winds that were part of it went to the north and to the south. People died in both places, including three in our county, about 20 miles south of us. (Although I gotta say, the chances of survival in a house like ours, with a basement and heavy retaining walls built deep into the earth, are pretty good, even if a tornado goes right overhead.)

From a California perspective, it’s hard to get a bead on Midwestern weather (if anyone even tries). In California, when storms come in from the Pacific, they’re relatively predictable in terms of strength, direction and time of arrival. Here, the confluence of warm air coming northward from the Gulf, ambient winds from the West, and cold air coming southward from Canada makes predictions much more difficult. Dangerous weather springs up quickly, seemingly out of nowhere. I follow the NWS site closely, and on a given day you can look at the radar images at, say 1 p.m., and see nothing for hundreds of miles in all directions. When you look at them two hours later, you might see that a major storm has blossomed and is bearing down on your area.

From the LA Times:

Friday’s outbreak of tornadoes was “a one-in-20-year event,” spawned by a combination of a cold front, high humidity and warm weather, said Angie Lese, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Louisville, Ky.

“We knew it was going to be bad. All the ingredients came together for a significant outbreak,” she said. “We will have more severe weather this season. This isn’t the last of it, I’m sure. But this is pretty rare.”

Good.