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two or three days during the year that it did not.” Talk to most Kansans on any given day, and the conversation almost always rolls around to the weather. Is it hot enough for you? Cold enough? Windy enough? We are a state of skywatchers. Fortunes can be made and lost by Kansas weather. At times, the scent of rain on a spring day becomes a gambling fix. Only look into the faces of Kansas farmers when fields of golden wheat lie ready to be harvested as dark, green storm clouds march across their horizon. “Not only are we dependent on the weather, our livelihood depends on what is in the sky,” said Thomas Fox Averill, a Kansas historian and a professor of English at Washburn University in Topeka. “Anywhere you look in Kansas, two-thirds of the landscape is skyscape. We are always looking at the weather. I’d venture to say there isn’t a single, great Kansas novel that I have read that doesn’t have weather as a character.” Tornadoes are featured in Gordon Parks’ “Learning Tree,” Langston Hughes’ “Not Without Laughter” and Robert Day’s “The Last Cattle Drive.” And, of course, it is a central component in L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz.” Weather inspires the scientists, technicians and farmers within us: “We Kansans are resilient people because of the weather. We are from pioneer stock who came out here knowing it wasn’t going to be the most boring climate,” said Mike Smith, the senior vice president of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions and founder of Wichita-based WeatherData. “We have learned to adapt, prosper and thrive — and, to an extent, to even celebrate the weather extremes.”
Weather shaped the land Weather goes beyond what is happening in the here and now. It goes back millions of years, creating our land and features. “Weather is what is happening now, climate is longterm,” said Rex Buchanan, interim director of the Kansas Geological Society. “There is no question about it, the visible landscape in Kansas was shaped by geological components that are no longer going on.” Kansas has experienced both tropical and glacial environments. There is evidence of glaciers scraping eastern Kansas land. Inland seas once covered the state’s now most droughtladen western counties. During the Cretaceous period, when the land was still covered by the ocean, super hurricanes may have swept over the waters, said paleontologist Mike Everhart of Derby, an expert on the Western Interior Sea. During the Permian period, when Kansas was again covered by a warm edge of the sea, it was hot enough that it evaporated the water and left vast salt deposits, Everhart said. Some of those sea bottom mineral deposits have helped create today’s oil, gas and gypsum industries. In the deep weather history of Kansas, there was a time when crocodiles roamed our lands, when pterosaurs, creatures with wingspans of more than 25 feet, flew over our waters. The land was once home to long-legged camels, 600pound wolves and sabertooth tigers. Kansas has a variety of terrain — hills, valleys and long washed-out gullies where layers of limestone with jagged edges stick out from the sides. “We have been eroding away for the last 65 million years,” Everhart said. “Wind, rain and spring thaw have steadily been shaping the river valleys. That’s the rea-
STATE
X Sunday, May 22, 2011
WEATHER SAYINGS ● Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight. ● When the dew is in the grass, rain will never come to pass. When grass is dry at morning light, look for rain before the night. ● Clear nights = cold days ● When clouds look like rocks and towers, the Earth will be refreshed by showers. ● Trees showing the undersides of leaves foretell rain. ● When an oak leaf is as big as a squirrel’s ear, plant corn. ● Corn has to be knee high by the 4th of July to produce a good harvest. ● If a circle forms ‘round the moon, it will rain, very soon. ● If salt is sticky and gains in weight, it will rain before too late. ● When wind comes from the east, it’s not fit for man nor beast. ● In a green sky, the cows will fly. ● A wind from the south has rain in its mouth. ● If spiders are many and spinning their webs, the spell will soon be very dry. ● The louder the frog, the more the rain. ● If a woolly worm caterpillar’s black bands are black, the coming winter will be harsh.
son we find fossils today. The land is constantly being torn down and washed away, even with all the conservation efforts. Mother Nature wins in the end.”
Weather shaped the people The weather is Kansas: Curse it. Bless it. Pray for it. It is ever-changing and has always been on the minds of Kansans and those who visit. Without the aid of today’s radar, barometers and wind gauges, early Kansans took their chances on Mother Nature’s whims. The settlers learned to fortify themselves with storm cellars. Some believed weather could be changed and clouds made to produce rain by simply putting the plow to the prairie. When that didn’t work, western Kansas residents turned to building rugged irrigation canals to bring water to irrigate crops in an area described by explorer Zebulon Pike in 1806 as the “Great American desert.” Asa T. Soule made a fortune in New York marketing hopbitters medicine. In the 1880s, he invested $2 million in Ford County investments that included a canal project west of Dodge City. The Eureka Irrigation Canal Company took two years to build a 96-mile canal that inched along the north side of the Arkansas River through Gray and Ford counties. When it failed, it became known as Soule’s Folly. Summer 1897 was so hot that the Garden City Herald described one July day as “warm enough to melt tin roofs, render lard out of living hogs and to boil steak.” Rainmakers promised to tame the clouds into rain. Men like Frank Melbourne and Clayton B. Jewell promised to be rainmakers but would eventually became known as flimflam men. Melbourne promised the town of Goodland he could make it rain for $500. The Dodge City Globe
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reported that Jewell made nine attempts at rainmaking in Kansas in the spring of 1893, and each time reportedly produced at least one inch of rain within 48 hours. “It was glorified witchcraft,” said Dick Elder, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in Wichita. “There were definitely a lot of people trying to promote stuff. For years, we didn’t have a formalized weather bureau doing forecasts. People relied on the old weather proverbs.” “Mare’s tails and mackerel scales make tall ships take in their sails.” “Clear moon, frost soon.” “Halo around the sun or moon, rain or snow soon.” Once pioneer settlement began in earnest across the state, Kansas weather captured the nation’s eye. The granddaddy of all Kansas blizzards arrived in 1886. Nearly 100 people died, as did wildlife and thousands of cattle. It took almost a week to dig out and more than a month to survey all the damage. Western Kansas was hit hardest. There, people lived in dugouts or crudely constructed sheds that offered little protection. Stranded in their homes, many ran out of fuel and food. In his book “More True Tales of Old-Time Kansas,” David Dary reported that one Ness County family of seven died in the blizzards. When searchers reached them, they found the family had not only used up all its fuel, but had also burned all the furniture except for one large bed. All seven had climbed into the bed to try to keep warm, and there they slowly froze to death.
Tornadoes in folklore The ties binding Kansas and tornadoes apparently go back to 1879 when a large tornado decimated the small town of Irving in northeast Kansas, according to Price, the Kansas historian. Newspaper accounts of the damage and the suffering by townspeople were “very graphic” and captured the attention of readers back East, Price said. Baum initially planned to set “The Wizard of Oz” in South Dakota but changed it to Kansas when he was traveling through the state and two tornadoes interrupted his trip. The image is reinforced in murals depicting the state, Price said — including John Steuart Curry’s mural in the state Capitol. “You see tornadoes in the background, and a family scrambling from a tornado. People hated that: “Why are we always associated with tornadoes?” Price said. When sirens go off during storms, Kansans have one of two responses: Duck for cover, or go out with a video camera hunting for the tornado, Price said. “Even if you have never seen one, you know people who have tornado stories. It’s part of our folklore,” Price said. Price has a photo from El Dorado in 1915 showing people in straw hats, corsets and other Victorian clothing. “They’re out looking at the tornado,” he said. “It’s very Kansan.”
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››‡ Intersection (1994, Drama) Richard Gere.
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