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Just Another Jim

Just Another Essay



Weather

(and a word about geography)

Essay Posted June 17, 2008 by James E. Nelson

The weather’s beautiful in South Sioux City, Nebraska. This morning it was 50° when I got up. It’s supposed to get into the 80s today. The sun is shining. The ground is dry. There is not a sandbag in sight.

I say this because we’ve received a number of inquiries about our situation. I can only assume that people didn’t bother looking at a map. You see, Cedar Rapids (the center of the flooding in Iowa) is closer to Chicago than it is to Sioux City. And there’s a significant “sub-continental divide” through central Iowa which keeps the water over there from coming over here. In a word, it’s more likely that the current floods will cover the Sears Tower than the Sioux City courthouse.

This isn’t to say we’ve not received rain. We moved to Sioux City in 1995. I was candidating at Third Pres., here in Sioux City, during the flood that put Grand Forks completely under water and flooded out a great deal of eastern Iowa. Prior to this year, that was the worst flood this region has seen in decades. At that time I also visited with a yoked parish in the towns of Scotland and Tabor, SD. Much of that country was under water when we drove out there. As bad as 1995 was, the Missouri is higher this year (here in Sioux City) than it was in 1995. But there’s no talk of flood danger.

The tornado that passed straight through the boy scout camp, killing four scouts, was quite close. That scout camp is about fifty miles south of town. On the night of that tornado I was mowing the lawn. The sun was shining and there was a gentle breeze. I could see the thunder heads roiling to the south of us as they made their way northeast into central Iowa. But thunderstorms and tornadoes are typically very localized. If Brenda wouldn’t have had the television on, we would have known nothing of the havoc to the south of us other than the towering thunder head on the southern horizon.

In short, even though there are weather disasters all around us (drought in Montana, flooding in eastern Iowa, tornadoes to the south of us and melting ice caps to the north of us), the sun is shining outside my window and the temperature has risen to 53° since I started this project. All is copacetic in Siouxland.

Two years ago during a terrible hot spell we decided on a whim to head for Minnesota to cool off. We ended up in St. Cloud for a couple of days. While we were there the temperatures in Siouxland moderated down to the lower 90s. But it was near 100° while we were in St. Cloud. The church we went to that weekend (like many churches that far north) didn’t have air conditioning. Both vespers and Divine Liturgy were miserably hot.

In spite of our bad weather luck a couple of years ago, we’re going to try it again. This weekend we’re headed for Bemidji. We figured we’d spend Midsummer in the far north where the days are even longer than they are here. Bemidji does have a proper Midsummer festival called the “Harjedalen Midsommar Fest” (it’s actually on June 22, two days after Midsummer). We’re not planning on attending. It’s not that we’re purists about the date, it’s rather that it’s a Norwegian festival that features “herring on a stick.” (Argh! Norwegians!)

Instead, we’ll probably take in the Bemidji Game Fair & Pet Expo (bird dogs jumping into water chasing duck decoys, agility and obedience demonstrations along with a “meet the breed” area featuring all sorts of hunting dogs from retrievers to spaniels to giant poodles and schnauzers—it sounds waaaay better than herring on a stick!!!) or the Lake Bemidji State Park Summer Concert series on Sunday afternoon.

Oh, and we’ll definitely have lunch or dinner at the Southside Diner at Pete’s Truck Stop. I spent many a night there in the dead of winter waiting to pick up a load of oriented strand board from the Norboard plant. The truck stop diner has the best selection of pies I have seen in a long time, including rhubarb, cherry/rhubarb, strawberry/rhubarb (when in season), raspberry/rhubarb, creamy rhubarb raisin (which sounds a wee bit better than herring on a stick), wildberry/rhubarb (I asked; it includes huckleberries and whatever else grew well that last summer), plus a variety of fruit and cream pies.

With any luck the temperature won’t be +100° or -40°, and Lake Bemidji won’t be flooded (after all, it’s only 500 miles from Cedar Rapids, so it’s something we have to worry about). If we can manage that, I’m sure everything will be copacetic.