With regards to reforestation and its impact on climate change and local cooling, I have some remarks of what a drastic event in 2022 has claimed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where I live.
Prior to August 19, 2022, Cedar Rapids was listed as a Tree City USA city, lush with green vegetation that kept it cooler than the surrounding farmland during the hot Iowa summers. A derecho built to the west and blew through Eastern Iowa, and then moved onto Illinois.
But it did the greatest damage to Linn County and specifically Cedar Rapids on August 10, 2022, when sustained winds easily of 90 to 100 mph for 40 minutes, with gusts registering 140 mph, tore through the timber of Cedar Rapids , felling approximately 770,000 trees and other foliage.
The next spring you did not hear a single bird chirp. All of the animals had not returned, or still hiding in the deep ravines that run through the city. It was an eerie quiet at night when all that could be heard were the trains that run along tracks in various parts of the city, many delivering grain to the largest cereal mill in the world, Quaker Oats.
It was recently published in the Cedar Rapids Gazette that summer temperatures along some of the most traveled areas of town recorded summer temperatures 30 higher than before derecho. And many homes still show the wear that no insurance policy would ever cover. Stripped paint, large stumps, half-felled trees, broken gutters, and even more boarded up houses than one would have expected from before the storm.
Some buildings were never re-built. Some businesses never reopened. Some homeowners were ripped off. ((My condo association was one of them.)
The beautiful Tree City USA will never be replaced I. My lifetime. The government has donated thousands of trees to replant what was lost on right of ways. But trees are expensive for homeowners to buy, and to water. Poorer neighborhoods don’t have those resources. And I have a family member who paid $40,000 just to have her trees removed. Her lot in the woods is now barren. She is 95.
Devastation like this derecho created an overnight schism of quality of life to my city. Waiting for buses on a hot day, having more asthma attacks, keeping cool if you don’t have air conditioning… these are issues that mostly affect poorer people. Yet I believe a larger swath of the population experiences health problems and higher utility usage and costs, because we lost our trees.
Our once bountiful parks look sad. Our homes sit exposed with no beautiful canopy. Kids have no trees to climb.
Thirty more degrees along some areas has stolen the lazy days of summer. It was that one derecho that changed my city.
With regards to reforestation and its impact on climate change and local cooling, I have some remarks of what a drastic event in 2022 has claimed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where I live.
Prior to August 19, 2022, Cedar Rapids was listed as a Tree City USA city, lush with green vegetation that kept it cooler than the surrounding farmland during the hot Iowa summers. A derecho built to the west and blew through Eastern Iowa, and then moved onto Illinois.
But it did the greatest damage to Linn County and specifically Cedar Rapids on August 10, 2022, when sustained winds easily of 90 to 100 mph for 40 minutes, with gusts registering 140 mph, tore through the timber of Cedar Rapids , felling approximately 770,000 trees and other foliage.
The next spring you did not hear a single bird chirp. All of the animals had not returned, or still hiding in the deep ravines that run through the city. It was an eerie quiet at night when all that could be heard were the trains that run along tracks in various parts of the city, many delivering grain to the largest cereal mill in the world, Quaker Oats.
It was recently published in the Cedar Rapids Gazette that summer temperatures along some of the most traveled areas of town recorded summer temperatures 30 higher than before derecho. And many homes still show the wear that no insurance policy would ever cover. Stripped paint, large stumps, half-felled trees, broken gutters, and even more boarded up houses than one would have expected from before the storm.
Some buildings were never re-built. Some businesses never reopened. Some homeowners were ripped off. ((My condo association was one of them.)
The beautiful Tree City USA will never be replaced I. My lifetime. The government has donated thousands of trees to replant what was lost on right of ways. But trees are expensive for homeowners to buy, and to water. Poorer neighborhoods don’t have those resources. And I have a family member who paid $40,000 just to have her trees removed. Her lot in the woods is now barren. She is 95.
Devastation like this derecho created an overnight schism of quality of life to my city. Waiting for buses on a hot day, having more asthma attacks, keeping cool if you don’t have air conditioning… these are issues that mostly affect poorer people. Yet I believe a larger swath of the population experiences health problems and higher utility usage and costs, because we lost our trees.
Our once bountiful parks look sad. Our homes sit exposed with no beautiful canopy. Kids have no trees to climb.
Thirty more degrees along some areas has stolen the lazy days of summer. It was that one derecho that changed my city.
Really liked your article on the Imperial exams in Tang China. I wonder if the elites paid for tutors to boost their kids' results?