A common reminder
of wind from decades past was the presence of numerous windmills drawing groundwater for humans and livestock. The modern wind-driven turbine is increasingly being used to generate electrical energy. On hot days, we always
welcome a cooling breeze.
Most of us are
enthralled by the rare glassy smooth, mirrored surface of some lake or stream,
but most usually the wind, to some degree—sometimes violently—is pushing the
surface into waves. I’ve heard that,
because of the long north/south “fetch” of the Tuttle Creek Reservoir in Kansas, a strong
north or south wind can push the water into waves five-six feet high. Some days no sort of boat normally purchased
in this area is safe out on the reservoir.
Strong wind
currents from various types of storms have caused many airplane and ship wrecks
and brought untold amounts of destruction to human lives, homes, schools,
churches, factories, businesses and infrastructure, and trees. The sea off Cape Hatteras, part of the
coastline of North Carolina, has been called “The Graveyard of the
Atlantic.” I live in “Tornado Alley,”
an area that encompasses much of the Midwest and the South, and increasingly
the Upper Midwest and East. Our Atlantic
coast is known as “Hurricane Alley.” And
in California, residents dread the annual onslaught of the Santa Ana winds. In New England, it’s the windy “Nor’easter” storms
that can especially cause trouble. Many
Kansans, and surely including numerous MLH residents, have tales to tell about
the effects the wind had on topsoil during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
One of the
countless examples of the regionalism of awareness and of attitudes is that the
Dust Bowl was an abstraction for this pre-teen farm boy during the 1930s
in the Missouri River Bottomlands some 100 miles east of Kansas City. I recall one day, early dusk, when I was
walking with my Dad from the barn after he had milked our Jersey cow. I asked him about the unusually orangish
sunset sky. He remarked that it was
“just Kansas blowing by.”
One prediction
from students of climate change is that storms from driven winds will increase
in both number and intensity. It seems
that we are seeing that trend now. The insurance industry is reeling from the
deluge of claims brought from the greatly increased damages sustained from such
storms; we now speak of an increased number of storms and of
billion-dollar storms. And the industry
has been forced to realize that both wind and water have to be considered when
assessing damages from hurricanes.
However, without the effects of wind, we would not have certain of the natural spectacles we enjoy. The huge piles of sand we see in Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado are the result of winds blowing for eons of time across the broad, flat and dry San Luis Valley west of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, picking up and piling sand up against the western flank of those mountains. And wind surely played a major role in forming the giant dunes of the Sahara Desert in Africa, those of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan, as well as the dunes we sometimes see in other deserts and along some seacoasts.
Another type of soil displacement results in what are called Loess Hills (pronounced luss), a German word meaning “loose,” which refers to a gritty, yellowish-to grayish-tan type of soil often made up mostly of sand and clay. These sediments can be found blown into hills in eastern China, north-central Europe and in our own Midwest. By far the largest assemblage of loess hills in our Midwest is the 200-mile long strip (up to 25 miles deep east-to-west) in Iowa just east of the Missouri River. Some of these hills are 250 feet high, among the tallest known.
In the Midwest,
the Loess Hill story began some 25-30 thousand years ago when the great ice
sheet covering the Midwest as far down as the NE corner of Kansas began to melt
and recede from the area. As the
glaciers melted—mostly during summers--water filled the Missouri River
Basin. With winter and reduced melting, the water level in the basin dropped, and large amounts of silt were
left behind, exposed. Much of that silt
was swept up by the strong winds of that time and dropped mostly just east of the
Missouri River, in western Iowa. This
cycle was repeated over thousands of winters until about 12,000 years ago.
A road cut
through a loess hill shows the lack of that stratification into layers of clay,
flint or chert, limestone, shale, dolomite, etc., that we see in a typical
Flint Hills road cut. Loess soil is very
loosely organized and easily subject to erosion. People have settled in these hills, but much
care has to be taken with how the soil is disturbed or tilled.
No wonder our
language is permeated with words and expressions related to the concept of moving
air. We sometimes speak of a strong wind
as a blow. We speak of a puff of
this-or-that, describe as all puffed-up someone who is mouthy, boastful or
cocky. We blow up tires and also blow
them out by hitting a sharp object while driving; blow off a person, meeting,
idea, or an opportunity; blow up a balloon. We blow up at someone, blow up things with
explosives, while our plans and dreams sometimes blow up. We speak of having
the wind at our backs. We test the wind
when we float a new idea. But all is not
lost; we do blow kisses to loved ones and friends—on the wind.
--submitted by Nathan Bolls (Elder RiverSoul)
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