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How are you 50+ folks in Iowa doing?

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Fifty Plus (50+) Share the victories, challenges, successes and special concerns of bicyclists 50 and older. Especially useful for those entering or reentering bicycling.

How are you 50+ folks in Iowa doing?

Old 08-14-20, 08:46 PM
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jppe
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How are you 50+ folks in Iowa doing?

It sounds like there were some hurricane force winds that affected a fairly large area. Hope everyone is okay.
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Old 08-15-20, 09:42 AM
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Originally Posted by jppe
It sounds like there were some hurricane force winds that affected a fairly large area. Hope everyone is okay.
I am originally from the area, lots of relatives still there. It’s a national disaster that is getting no attention because of Covid and election coverage.Widespread power outages . Food in stores and homes and restaurants is spoiling.
Maybe 50 % of crops destroyed. Some areas have no trees left standing.
Communications are down because of power outages. It goes on and on.
If you been to Iowa you know that’s a lot of crops and will affect the world food supplying. I have ridden the whole state in Six RAGBRAI .


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Old 08-16-20, 05:07 PM
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Best wishes to the folks in the Midwest. 2020 can't end soon enough.
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Old 08-16-20, 07:04 PM
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Iowan here, and first-time poster. We lost power for 1 day but some work colleagues just got theirs today after 6 days. Every street in my city had tree damage and most streets had at least some house damage. Made it very difficult to go for a leisurely ride while there was so much work going on all around. Cedar Rapids area sounds like it was most severely affected.
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Old 08-17-20, 09:31 AM
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Photos from Iowa

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Old 08-17-20, 10:07 AM
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My niece and nephews in Cedar Rapids had lots of tree damage, and roof and siding damage. My niece even had her garage twisted off its foundation. The big problem is they still have no power there after a week. Portable power units are like gold.

And yes since it didnt happen on either the east or west coast the MSM barely gave it any attention at all. Us people here in the center of the country are just fly over people and are not important at all!!!!
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Old 08-17-20, 10:18 AM
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I don't think it's true that the rest of the country doesn't care about the Midwest. To be blunt, the place we don't care about as a Nation is Puerto Rico since it is not a state. I do think the Governor was very slow in seeking emergency aid. She applied for federal disaster relief today; the storm was a week ago.

The eastern part of the state (like Cedar Rapid) got it worse than the central part. I live in central Iowa (Des Moines). The storm was bad here as well; it was effectively a category 2 hurricane. A lot of trees are down. Electricity is still a problem for a great many people. Luckily the weather has not been too hot.

I've done a bit of bike riding around town. The power lines are back up and most are functional but the tree damage is bad. The homes seem OK though.

I do agree that the pace for help for eastern Iowa is abysmal.
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Old 08-17-20, 11:29 AM
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Just heard about this yesterday ... how can this be so muted in the national news?

What a year 2020 has been. What next?

No ... don't answer that question.
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Old 08-17-20, 12:46 PM
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https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...202449971.html

It hasn't been all over the news but I have heard about it both on local and national news.
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Old 08-17-20, 12:52 PM
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Iowa is major supplier of the world food supply . Both produce and meat. Corn for ethanol.Soy beans for vegan type stuff. Food prices are rising before this.
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Old 08-18-20, 11:14 AM
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Originally Posted by Rotgut
Iowan here, and first-time poster. We lost power for 1 day but some work colleagues just got theirs today after 6 days. Every street in my city had tree damage and most streets had at least some house damage. Made it very difficult to go for a leisurely ride while there was so much work going on all around. Cedar Rapids area sounds like it was most severely affected.
Thank you for the local report. I have fond memories of business trips (conferences and customer visits) to Cedar Rapids, where I was always treated as a valued guest.
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Old 08-22-20, 06:10 PM
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I'm in Iowa City, which is about 20 miles south of Cedar Rapids. We had winds around 80 mph and I had a few medium branches down in the yard and part of the wooden fence down. So not bad here compared to a few miles north. Only lost power here for about a half hour, though parts of town were out for 4 or 5 days. I didn't have internet/cable for 8 or 9 days. Saw plenty of reports about it on national news and of course local news was nothing but. Of note on this forum, the first person reported killed was a bicyclist caught out on a wooded trail. Crushed by a falling tree.

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Old 08-23-20, 05:39 AM
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Originally Posted by rydabent
snip . . .

And yes since it didnt happen on either the east or west coast the MSM barely gave it any attention at all. Us people here in the center of the country are just fly over people and are not important at all!!!!
NPR this Friday on Science Friday had a really piece on the Derecho that hit the Midwest. There were 2 really good points about why the response has been that pathetic.

1. We have days to prepare for hurricanes. We had very little time to prepare for this. When a hurricane hits, the various federal and state agencies prepare by positioning both equipment and supplies. That did not and could not happen with the derecho.

2. The state, and the governor, was very slow to understand the magnitude of the problem. Derechos are not uncommon (the term was coined in the late 19th century) but one this strong is unusual. I'm not excusing the governor. The state should have moved faster to seek federal aid. I lived in New Orleans before moving to Iowa and we are seeing some of the same problems here that we saw in Katrina with a very slow federal response.

This is on the first time the term derecho was used:
https://www.wlfi.com/content/news/Lo...572105601.html

Another related issue is the warning system. I had a warning of the storm because I have a radio with SAME weather alerts
https://www.weather.gov/nwr/nwrsame

It was going off like crazy the morning of the storm. Of course most people don't have this. We should do something like this via cell phone but that has not yet been instituted.

We've gotten so much better at predicting extreme weather alerts. Hurricanes for example used to be much more devastating in terms of loss of life because of the lack of warning. That is no longer the case. But that is a problem with derechos because they pop up so fast. And that makes disaster response more difficult. I'm not excusing anyone for this but I don't think it's because people on the "coasts" don't like the midwest.
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Old 08-23-20, 05:44 AM
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We are still cleaning up in Des Moines but it is not as bad as the eastern part of the state. The people on the street behind me lost power for around a week. But other neighbors helped out with generators and the like. I gave one of my neighbors a Yeti filled with ice packs, cold beer, and grapes. I just grabbed everything that looked cold in my fridge. Internet was down for a week. We are still cleaning up tree debris. Tree clean up is still ongoing as a really large number of trees went down or lost branches.

But we have nothing to complain about in the middle part of the state compared to the rest of the state. The situation is still terrible. rydabent asks exactly the right question which is how is this possible. Here is a piece from today's NYT documenting some of the ongoing problems in Cedar Rapids:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/22/u...gtype=Homepage
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Old 08-25-20, 11:32 AM
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On the day of the Derecho I started my daily 1½ hour bike ride at 1:30. The Internet had quit about an hour earlier for reasons unknown to me at the time but the earlier weather forecast called for rainstorms to begin at about 3:30.
I saw very dark clouds to the west, my direction of travel. Since the temperature was above 90° F. I figured a rain storm would provide welcome cooling. In less than 5 minutes of riding the wind started picking up and it looked like a wall of dust/dirt approaching from the west and north. The temperature dropped so quickly it felt like I opened a refrigerator door. I decided that I better do a U-turn and returned home. The wind storm followed as soon as I got home. Luckily no house or tree damage in my neighborhood. The Internet was down for two days but we never lost power. My son who lives 75 miles north was without power for three days and had minor tree damage. Overall we lucked out. Cedar Rapids area really took it on the chin
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