Voices of Cincy: New Orleans Visits Cincinnati (John Gumm)

Jun 25, 2010 by Loki

Welcome to the debut of our new Voices of Cincy series. A collection of guest posts by local bloggers and other members of our community. If you enjoy what they have to say leave a comment or go visit them in their individual lairs on the web, there will always be a bio and links for them at the end of each post. Today we are going to start off with a piece from one of our local weathermen, John Gumm (@Local12JohnWxr on Twitter). And before you ask, no I did not put him up to all the NOLA references, he did that on his own…. -Loki Founder and Curator

New Orleans Visits Cincinnati

No, I’m not talking about Loki.  He lives in Northside now.  Nor am I talking about any of the numerous friends I made during my magical three year stint in New Orleans while working at WWL-TV.  Although I do love it when my friends from the Crescent City make it north.  Their energy, creativity and love for their city have always been refreshing to me.

The guest I’m talking about is that blasted humidity.  It’s an unwelcome guest in my town.  Yes, I put up with you when I lived on your turf Mr. Humidity.  (HumidCity: what an appropriate name for a New Orleans blog!) You see, I expected you to greet me when I left my home to head into work in the French Quarter.  A heat index of 100 at 4:00 AM was not uncommon in the summer as I made the 100 foot trip from my car to inside the WWL-TV weather center. (Heat Index – for the record – is the “virtual temperature” based on a combination of temperature and dew point – for more see below). I remember the smells too (good and bad together)!

Anyway, when I finally arrived in the weather center I was usually covered in sweat despite having only been outside for 30 seconds. But for you to follow me here is a difficult pill to swallow.  You could have at least brought me a pot of gumbo. Or even my favorite po’ boy from the Quarter Grocery on Burgundy (dressed please and soaked in hot sauce). But oh no, you come straight out of New Orleans right into Cincinnati without bearing any gifts at all!

That’s OK.  I know you won’t be here long when you do visit. And thankfully it’s a rare occurrence.  You see, the air we had in Cincinnati earlier in the week came straight from New Orleans.  Air with plenty of water vapor included. As they say in NOLA, the water vapor is “lagniappe” or a little something extra. It’s just that I don’t want this lagniappe.

You might be familiar with relative humidity as a way to gauge how sticky it’ll be outside.  We give this in percentages: 40%, 50%, 60%, etc.  Well, forget about that stat.  It’s pretty much useless and outdated.  If you want the real scoop on how humid it will be in the summer, look at the dew point temperature.  The dew point is an actual measure of the amount of water vapor in the air and has way more to do with how it feels than relative humidity which is always relative to the air temperature.

Here’s a quick primer on dew point temperatures:  65 degrees or above and the air is thick enough to swim in.  When you hit 70, you feel like you’re sitting in the middle of the bayou.  In Cincinnati last week, we had a dew point of 77 degrees and a heat index of 100!  We could have breathed better if we had gills.  Again, this air came straight from the mouth of the Mississippi.  A huge area of high pressure aloft (think a big bubble of hot air) centered over Oklahoma and Arkansas forced hot, humid air from the bayou into the Ohio Valley.  And worse yet, we were sitting on the edge of this hot bubble of air.  That’s where you get the storms.  Clusters of storms which blast through the area quickly. They have tons of moisture available to them from all that water vapor in the atmosphere and dump very heavy rain.

To put it in perspective, think of a ring of fire at a circus.  Inside the ring, there is no fire, but it’s hot.  On the edge of the ring you have fire.  But in this weather analogy, the fire is the storms. Well, folks, we were in the fire last week with numerous reports of heavy rain, flooding and wind damage.

This pattern looks to repeat itself this weekend, especially late in the weekend as temperatures go up and storm chances increase.  In fact, some strong or severe storms are possible on Sunday. But there is some good news.  I do see cooler temperatures and lower humidity again as we head into the middle of next week.  Until then, prepare for our friend, Mr. Humidity from NOLA to pay us another visit this weekend.  I hope he at least brings me some pralines or a Muffaletta. Heck, I’d even take a Lucky Dog. It’s the least he can do.

John Gumm is a native Cincinnatian who has achieved his childhood dream of making a living out of predicting the future.  Since his mom wouldn’t let him become a psychic, he settled for becoming a meteorologist and now works on Cincinnati’s top-rated morning newscast “Good Morning Cincinnati” which can be seen weekdays from 5-9 AM on WKRC Local 12. He figures it’s the next best thing to reading palms. John is also the co-founder and CEO of Hurricane Baby, LLC (www.hurricanebaby.com) a mobile software development company based in the Cincinnati area. Read more about John on Local12.com or hit him up on Facebook at www.facebook.com/john.gumm

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The Great SuperBowl River City Crossover

Feb 6, 2010 by Loki

I’m sitting in Cincinnati watching the snow pile up outside. It feels perfectly appropriate since the Saints are going to their first SuperBowl in history. Satan is skating to work through a frozen hell-scape today! The excitement gripping New Orleans is so intense I can physically feel it up here in Cincy, and I can’t stand football!

It’s hard to get across what things are like back in NOLA to many of the people up here. This is not a slam, not at all! There is a lot of genuine support for the Saints even here right next to Colts territory. There is just no frame of reference for my new neighbors as far as both what this means to the Crescent City and just how outlandishly we embrace the attendant revelry, especially after the past four and a half years since New Orleans was 80% destroyed by the levee failure that followed Hurricane Katrina. After hosting 9 SuperBowls the Saints finally get to play their first one! It’s a moment that crosses all socioeconomic boundaries, all ethnicity, all political divides. There are only black and gold people in the city now no matter what shade their complexion may be.

Rachel Maddow did a great show last night from down in the French Quarter and some of the scenes she showed illustrate exactly how wonderful and crazy things are right now. Check it out! [The Rachel Maddeux Sheaux]

There, that should help those not in or of New Orleans to understand. But why am I posting this on CincyVoices and on HumidCity you ask? Because I will always be a New Orleanian, just as I will always try to embrace and be a part of my new home here in Cincy. Of course it doesn’t hurt to have an outpost of “Who Dat” in “Who Dey” land. (BTW, I hate to break it my Cincy people, but Who Dat predates Who Dey by a long, long time. Since the 1800s in fact. )

So this is a heads up for all of you in both cities: tomorrow we will be sharing some absurdity with all of you. As has been documented, I have a long standing “bet that will never have to get paid” about the Saints. One which I now have to pay up on. I’ll be watching the game tomorrow, my first willing football game, and I will be doing so in a Saints cheerleader outfit. Not only that, but thanks to my colleague Bastlynn who found it online, I will be doing so in an authentic cheerleader’s uniform worn by a real Saints cheerleader in the 1970s. Yes it will be blogged.

For the amusement of our readers in both cities I’ll be cross-posting it to both HumidCity and CincyVoices so that eveyone can get  a good laugh. I’d like to invite our New Orleans WhoDats to leave us some comments in the Cincy Site and vice versa. There are lots of great people in each scene and I think the discussions that could ignite would be a blast!

One last thing. Since it is Carnival season right now I’d also like to mention a Carnival oriented event I stumbled across up here in Cincy called Krewe. Yes, they spelled it right. These folks do a Mardi Gras party that is a fund raiser for local charities, I’ve meet one of the organizers and I’ve got a lot of respect for what they’re doing and how they’re going about it. If you’re reading this in Cincy check it out, it’s a good party for a good cause. If you’re reading this in New Orleans throw em a few words of support. [Krewe by the Bacchanalian Society]

Bringing a little New Orleans to Northside Cincy-  Who Dat!

This post is mirrored on HumidCity.

-Loki, CincyVoices/HumidCity Founder

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Who Dey? For The SuperBowl It’s Who Dat!

Jan 31, 2010 by Loki

As some of you are aware I’m the member of the team most recently relocated to the city. My wife and I came up here last Spring from New Orleans and rapidly became ensconced in Northside. My point of origin is crucial for understanding this post.

You see, this year the Saints are finally going to the Superbowl. I can already hear Satan skating to work. Not only that, but I have to wear a Saints cheerleader outfit and blog it during the game. It’s one of those “so long a shot you know it will NEVER happen” bets, and now for many of us that hail from the Crescent City “never” has arrived.  On our sister site back in New Orleans, HumidCity, one of our bloggers observes:

Apparently a lot of bets are being paid off this year with the Saints first appearance in the Superbowl. From cash to expensive bottles of alcohol to cross-dressing, the Bet That Will Never Be Paid has turned into a very profitable wager for the Faithful. Perennially a 100-1 dog, (or worse,) the odds at the start of the 2009 season for the Saints to get to the Big Dance were between 10-1 and  4-1. And it was a great bet for 43 years. If the Saints made it, you got paid; if they didn’t, you didn’t lose anything. You can’t find better odds than that! Even people who don’t like sports got sucked into the action – case in point: our own Loki.

Indeed. I’ve never had any great liking of sports in general, but even I made one of those bets. The full story is available here on HumidCity. Take a moment and give it the once over so you’ve got the proper background. I’ll wait here.

In the meantime here is the part that effects us here in Cincinnati. I will be watching the Superbowl for the first time ever, and I will be doing so while wearing a Saints cheerleaders uniform. Not only that, but one worn by a real Saints cheerleader back in the 1970s.  I will be taking a cue from Buddy D. this next Sunday, and raising a toast to New Orleanians everywhere. Our day has finally come! Yes, it will be blogged both here and on HumidCity.

While Who Dey is the cheer you’ll hear from CincyVoices, the Bengals aren’t in the running and all our energy is going  into a good solid New Orleans style WHO DAT!

Another  Cincy / NOLA synchronicity is the addition of a Cincy born blogger to the ranks of HumidCity.  Jack “Monkeyboy” Ware, a voice much missed in the NOLA blogosphere since he retired from NOLA Metroblogging, has turned out to be a Clifton boy, something I was completely unaware of.  So now we have a Cincy boy on HumidCity, and I’m the New Orleans boy on CincyVoices. I’m amused by that. [View Jack Ware's Bio Here, 5th one down]

-Loki, CincyVoices/HumidCity Founder and Temporary Saints Cheerleader

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