Summertime

After a couple of chilly days, summer seems to have arrived. Memorial Day is one of the semi-official markers for the beginning of summer, and Rensselaer had its traditional memorial day commemoration in Weston Cemetery on Monday. Speakers were Robert Monfort, Mayor Arihood, and Fr. William Stang. There was a good attendance on a warm, sunny day.

I took the picture below on Sunday evening as yet another batch of storms moved through. The only reason I am posting it is that it turned out very well for cloud pictures.

Another marker for the beginning of summer is the end of school. Rensselaer Central High School had its graduation on Sunday, but today, Tuesday, is the last day of school. St. Augustine's students spent most of the day in the park where the big kids (fourth and fifth graders) had a ride-your-bike-to-the-park day.

I am not sure what the object of this activity was, but the kids were having a lot of fun.

And then it was lunch time. The students did not require much encouragement to stop playing and line up in the lunch line.

The pool at the park is still without water although it was scheduled to be filled today. The problem is that the park workers need to clean the pool before they fill it, but the pool drains into Brookside creek and the level of the creek is now above the bottom of the pool. So they cannot drain the water used to clean the pool.

A weird window lock

Last weekend I went to the Building Trades open house on Saturday, but on Sunday there was another open house, this one provided by Landmark Realty. They had four houses open for viewing, two of them quite close to where I live. So I did what a lot of my neighbors did: I took a look at the houses. (I got to chat with quite a number of people I knew along the way--it was quite an interesting social event.)

Some houses are more interesting than others. The most interesting house on this tour of homes was a big 19th century home on the corner of Lincoln and College. I live in a house that is only a century old, and it is fun to compare what these houses have with what my house has or had.

One of the little things that attracted my attention were the window locks--I had never seen any like these before. Below is a picture of one locked.

And the next picture shows it open, so you can move the window sash.

Not all of these old locks were still in working order.

I like old houses because they have character, but my conclusion after viewing three of the four houses that were on this free tour of homes was that old houses are for young people. They require a lot of maintenance, or in the case of two of the houses I saw, a lot of restoration and repair. Young people are both willing and able to do a lot more of that work than most of us older people.

Just one more (maybe)

I know I said that I was done with the tornadoes, but how often do we have them in the area? And I wrote the title to that post before I realized that there had been a second tornado just to the west of Rensselaer. How could I ignore it, especially since I needed to get out and get some exercise this afternoon?

The second tornado started near the Interstate, and the report in the Rensselaer Republican said its origin was in Memory Gardens. I looked around a bit before I found one tree that had been damaged.

The twister then crossed SR 114 and headed for a house. From the distance I could see a large tree branch that had been snapped.

After that house, it was open fields until it hit the line of trees along the road to the Old Settler's/ Makeever Cemetery. It tore up three of the small trees and tossed them on the road. They had already been cleared from the road, but the debris was still there.

It then crossed County Road 400S and apparently pushed one of the electrical poles from its vertical stand. A crew from REMC was there this afternoon pushing it back to vertical. I asked if it was caused by the tornado, and the guy I asked did not know, but said it was some kind of wind. Since it was on the path, I think we can assume it was tornado related.

After crossing the road, it was in open fields. There is a tree line in the distance, but I could not see any obvious destruction along it. In fact I could find no other signs of storm damage. Chad's Weather blog had this one traveling up to 300S, while the Rensselear Republican reported it only went to 400S. My observations support the Rensselaer Republican.

If all tornadoes only did as little damage as this one, we would not worry much about them.

Here is an article about the outbreak in the Post Tribune.

Postponements and seedings

The Family River Adventure scheduled for tomorrow morning has been postponed again--no real surprise with the rise in the river after this week's rains. If conditions allow, the Adventure will float by on June 18.

The boys track regionals were supposed to take place last night but the four that are in the northern part of the state were postponed to tonight, probably due to high winds. Meanwhile the heat sheets for the girls state finals were posted on the ihsaa.org website. Rensselaer's sophomore Chelsie Meeks is seeded sixth (of 27) in the discus throw. The high seeding is not surprising because she did meet the state standard in the regional. (The state standard is based on the results of previous state competitions and is supposed to represent a result that would give a top-9 finish.) The girl who beat her in the regional, a senior from Portage, is seeded first in both discus and shot. The next best seeding from the area is Marissa Hamilton for West Central. Fourteen girls have the same high-jump height and can be considered tied for sixth. Alisha Bahler in 300 hurdles for Tri-County and Kristin Fritz in the 1600 for KV are seeded near the back of their fields.

Update: I did not see any boys from the area who made the state track finals.

Final thoughts (I hope) on the tornadoes

Last night I had to quit my tornado path tracking because it was starting to get dark. Today I found that I could track it a bit further. After making a mess in the woods just north of the CenturyLink building behind the Rensselaer Care Center, it crossed the ditch and then the highway, and hit the farm house that is east of the high school and on the west side of the river across from Laird's Landing. I could not see if it had done any structural damage, but it had uprooted one tree and it appeared to have damaged two others.

I could not see where it hit the line of trees on the banks of the river. Perhaps if I had walked up the river from Laird's Landing I would have seen something, but there are limits to my curiosity.

According the the Rensselaer Republican, there was other storm damage in the Paar area and somewhere along Bunkum Road.

Chad's Weather blog said that there were four tornadoes in Jasper and Newton Counties on Wednesday. The strongest was an EF2 that was near Mt Ayr. A second started near Memory Gardens east of the Interstate and did not quite make it to the radio station. A third is the one I have written about. It started near Lake Banet and ended west of Laird's Landing. I am not sure if the damage in College Woods was caused by this tornado or if it was other winds from the storm.

I do not see how the river float scheduled for this Saturday can take place. Not only will the river be too high, but there is danger of trees blocking the channel.

Planting has been running late this year, and the rains of the past week will delay it for several more days. The corn that has been planted is emerging. However, if it emerges to a temporary lake, it may have to be replanted. There is water in many fields, though not usually as much as is shown in the picture below. The photo below was taken from the Marion School Road looking east toward Pleasant Ridge.

I think this blog hit an all-time record number of daily visitors yesterday, when it had over 1200 visits. Anything over 200 is a good day, and anything below 100 is a slow day.

Addendum: I found that the saturated soil makes it easier to pull out the little trees that have popped up in places where I do not want them. Some of them I have cut down for several years, and now they have very big roots compared to their growth above ground.