Micro Climate in O'Fallon

[yogi]

O'Fallon Fog

PXL_125026268.MP_mod.jpg (417.52 KiB) Viewed 976 times

I have to say that one of the unexpected pleasantries of living here in O'Fallon has to do with the spectacular sky shows that Mother Nature puts on. In the case of the photo the point of my interest is the "patchy fog" in my neighbor's back yard. I was sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast and watching the sun rise above the rooftops when all of a sudden this fog appeared. It must have been there a while but became visible only when the sun was at a certain angle and the local, very local, air temperature was just right. There is no fog to the right side of that photo, which is where my back yard happens to be. Talk about micro climates ...

[Kellemora]

We get things like that down here in the valley all the time.
Cold air settles in the lower part of the valley at night, then rises up in the morning.
Living on the north face of the mountain means we don't have light hit our yard for over an hour after official sunrise.
But we can look over at the next mountain and see the sun lighting it's way down the south face of that mountain, and the fog begin to roll southward toward us, but when the sun gets that far, the fog has usually dissipated. But not always, some days it rolls right up our valley like an eerie ghost heading toward and through us, hi hi.

Nice VIEW by the way!

[yogi]

Indeed it is a pleasant view. When we were first here looking for a place to settle the process started several months before we found this place. Our initial attempts at finding a new nest started in Lake Saint Louis where the newest homes were about twenty-five years old. The beauty of that situation was that everything we saw there was customized. One of the homes could have easily been owned by you. The owner at the time made a lot of the cabinetry and molding throughout the entire house. He offered to help me continue the traditions given that he had all the tools and skills to do so. It was tempting, but honestly, how often do you see modern homes with crown molding? This place had it and it was beautiful for an era centered around my early childhood. Yes we are old people and were looking for a place to retire, but not THAT old.

After looking at all the available homes in Lake Saint Louis, and not finding a compelling reason to buy any one of them, we started our search in O'Fallon. After four or five trips down here from Chicago, and the impending sale of our house up north, we were getting pretty tired of migrating and looking for a place to call home. The real estate agent ran out of places to show us so she found something that did not meet our specifications exactly and decided to show it to us. That view in the picture was the first thing I saw when we walked in and in a matter of milliseconds the decision in my mind was made. This was it for the view if for no other reason. Those trees and the house to the left did not exist when we first saw this place so that the view was even more expansive. Fortunately the guy next door made his back yard into a charming environment and enhanced the initial attraction to this place. Interestingly enough that neighbor only appears in his back yard to cut the grass. He has a couple kids that I've seen a few time in the past five years, but only once did they show themselves in that back yard.

The slope of the land in that picture continues back into my property and beyond. It's the reason why I bought myself a 4WD grass cutter and a pair of baseball spiked shoes. LOL

[ocelotl]

Fresh lawn sunrise mist... Yep, a lovely sight... Specially on a clear sunny sunrise after a rainy day. Up to the early '80s was a common sight over here, specially on regulation reservoirs... Now is mostly just in the outskirts of the city, in the former lakebed areas... And the best is that the temperature is not frigid as when frost sublimates... You are quite fortunate fellows.

[yogi]

I guess I am impressed by simple things.

At this time of the year I am up and about a little before the sun rises so that by the time I prepare breakfast and walk the dog I am ready for whatever show nature wants to put on. It's usually a general fog and not limited to a low lying area as I was able to photograph. This particular morning didn't look foggy at all until a few minutes before that picture was taken. Because it became visible so suddenly I was impressed, and then I realized it's just a patch and not a general distribution. It all has to do with dew point and air temperature and I never realized what only a degree or two of cold air would do. It all came about quickly and I happened to have my phone nearby so that preserving the moment seemed like the right thing to do. That scene is now the desktop background on this computer. LOL

There are no mountains around here. Maybe a few hills as you can see in the photograph, but that's about it. I've seen the Rocky Mountains up close and as much as I think the landscape is beautiful around here, nothing surpasses the majesty of a mountain. In some ways I think you, Juan, are the fortunate one.

[ocelotl]

It doesn't feel that way at an specially smoggy day with a strong thermal inversion... Or at rush hour at the subway... The issue is not as bad as in the '90s but it still needs work. Looking towards the transmission tower pictured in other thread, these are some of the hills of the western edge of the Guadalupe range.

[yogi]

I'm certain it all has to do with lighting, but the other picture doesn't look like the same mountain in the background. That one has a mountain with more vegetation I can see in the photo above. The Guadalupe Range is not like the Rockies that I have visited in person. Your mountains seem rounded and more like big hills; something I'd expect to see around Knoxville where Gary lives. Around Denver the mountains are pointed and high with sharp inclines. I am totally amazed by it all.

[Kellemora]

Although we live in one of the older parts of town, it is newer than much of Knoxville. The original houses here were built in the late 1940's, but many have been torn down and replaced with newer homes. This is one of the reasons why I covered our concrete block stucco with vinyl siding. Makes it blend in with the houses around me.
We also liked having a large back yard. And being uphill from the road means if something does blow up here, it gets washed right back down to the street again, hi hi.

I switched my prescriptions from Walgreens to Kroger to save money on most of them, and for convenience. Kroger is a couple of miles closer to me, and we are by there more often than we are up near Walgreens.
I don't know what the problem was, because I checked with my insurance company first to make sure the prices are what I expected. But they refused to pay for today's scripts to Kroger, so I had to pay full price for both of them.
I do know Walgreens is their preferred pharmacy and Kroger only their standard rate pharmacy, but the drugs I was picking up were originally tier 1 drugs. Come to find out when I got home they moved one of them up to tier 3 of all things. But they still didn't pay for the tier 1 drug at all either. Irked me to no end.
Then, after I paid using a credit card, I found I could have saved another 18 dollars by using one of my Kroger member cards. But they wouldn't reverse my credit card charge for me to take advantage of that.
Ii will bill by insurance company for my out of pocket that they were supposed to cover!

[yogi]

The concept of "fitting in" with the neighbors/neighborhood is carried to an extreme where I am currently living. The HOA is what ticks me off the most but it's not the HOA that imposed themselves upon the people who live here. When I first moved in I was under the impression nobody around me was over forty years old, and that kind of made sense. They have very little home ownership experience was my thinking. After a few years the true picture became more visible. Only about half the people here are under forty, one quarter are over that number, and the remainders are like myself. Thus the attitude about needing some supervision in the neighborhood isn't age related. It's an attitude of all the people here in this community. I guess it looks nice to have all the homes the same style and everybody with the same window decorations and siding. While that might look nice it takes away from the individuality of the residents. I'm not like them, and I don't enjoy being forced to look like them. Stubborn old goat I am.

At the time we switched to Walgreens/AARP it was my understanding that the particular plan we chose would not pay for drugs purchased elsewhere. I do know in the previous plan CVS was preferred and Walgreens was not, but the plan would pay (different amounts) to both. If Kroger is in your plan's network, be they standard or preferred providers, the insurance should uphold their end of the bargain. In fact I thought the insurance would pay anybody, but those not in the network were barely covered. In any case, it's been a while since I looked at the details. Wife is in the process of evaluating our current drug plan and we might change due to what happened to you. Some of the drugs she must take went up a couple tiers.

[Kellemora]

I've only lived one place with an HOA and they were quite lenient about most things, provided you didn't deviate from their rule book by much. They actually liked the way I redid my house with the cedar, which did keep me in the warm country colors category, hi hi.

There is this one medicine I've been using now for about 2 to 3 years. I don't use it often, only when I really need it, after all it is only a strong cough syrup.
When I first got it, the part I paid was 11 bucks, and the ticket showed my insurance saved me 17 bucks, which means the retail price was around 30 bucks. The very last time I got a 6 oz bottle, my part was 18 bucks and it said I saved 14 bucks. So it went up a little.
I ordered a bottle from Kroger, 6 oz bottle same script, and they didn't get it ready because they said it is not covered by insurance and the retail price was now $4,445.00 Talk about price gouging. I checked with Walgreens, same thing, not covered, and at that price they know I don't want it.
No biggie, I bought some off the shelf for 8.88 and it works just as good, hi hi.

How can a drug company get by with jumping the price of cough syrup from 25 bucks to over 4 thousand bucks?

[yogi]

How can a drug company get by with jumping the price of cough syrup from 25 bucks to over 4 thousand bucks?

If the main ingredient for that syrup comes from Afghanistan, then it's easy to understand the price increase. Most likely that's not the reason, and I can only take wild guesses about why they did it. My first guess is that nobody buys it at the retail price, but the company has to come up with an MSRP for tax purposes. So, when they are forced to sell it for $32 due to insurance regulations, they have a pretty decent write off against profits. It's likely they are not losing money at the $32 sale value, but perhaps they are not making enough to justify producing the product. Then those damned government regulations come into play and say you can't stop making this stuff because ... it's a critical drug that is direly needed. So, OK, they can't stop making it, but they can stop you from buying it. I realize it looks like price gouging, but it's more likely that something else is going on. Contrary to popular belief gouging is counterproductive and the marketing people know it. Nobody is going to buy that syrup at the 4 thousand dollar level, so why bother to set the price that high?

[ocelotl]

There's another incentive for big pharma to increase their prescription medicine prices: Government backed health care systems. I've come to the conclusion that most of the prescription drugs have three sale prices:
- The price for insurance companies. This is the highest, and unfortunately, the one in your system.
- The price for government backed health systems. The mid tier one, that assures the bulk of their profits and the one that is published for government bids.
- The non insurance counter price. This is for the generic brands, is the discounted price at the pharmacy. It depends on the amount of competing brands and pharmacy chains, and also on the profit percentage defined for each country at each big pharma manufacturer, for taxing purposes...

It's sad to read and hear that the US health care system is so crooked that you have the highest over the counter prices in the world... And given your import legislation, there's not much we as individuals can do...

[Kellemora]

Medicare is handled in such a way that it is legal for some companies to charge them exorbitant prices while not allowing lower priced sales to take place, unless you pay cash for it yourself.
But if you are on Medicare, why pay 39 bucks for an item that Medicare will cover, even if it costs them 56 dollars a month to do so.
It is totally illogical for Medicare to pay 56 dollars a month for a 39 dollar retail priced item!
The same holds true for many other items as well! Crazy!

I also learned yesterday that I am stuck with the insurance company I currently have, even though we are in the time of year when we can change which companies we use. Because I have some medical devices that the company must pay for for 5 years, and then provide service items for free after that time period, but only up to another year, then they will start getting paid again.
If I change insurance companies while on these machines, the new insurance company has to cover them for a year for free, while the old company still gets paid for the 5 year term. Another Crazy thing they don't tell you about up front!

[yogi]

All that hidden information about specific coverage is not actually hidden. Finding it may not be too too difficult either when you use your computer to do the research. Understanding it once you find it, however, might require a Harvard law degree. There are legal requirements that force those insurance companies to explain how they operate but the information is rarely sought out by individuals. Instead they rely on brokers and agents to do the comparisons come what may after that. As is always the case, it's incumbent upon the purchaser to know what they are buying so that while the information about the details is always there nobody is obligated to explain it all. You must know what to ask or do the investigations on your own. It's simply not practical to verbally explain everything to everybody, and it takes many years to get that law degree if you do it on your own.

Part of the craziness in pricing is due to the fact that covering the cost of prescription drugs is not a profitable business in many cases. Without Medicare you and I would be paying retail prices instead of whatever that Medicare premium happens to be. Prices are negotiated and updated every year, and in order to get the insurance companies and pharma manufacturers to come to an agreement, some crazy price fixing must take place. It would be a lot less complicated, and probably cheaper, if there were only a single insurance company negotiating prices. In this country competition is allowed and encouraged, which produces the scheme we all are forced to deal with at the moment.

[ocelotl]

The profits to big pharma is on the big sales. Those sold to the health care systems worldwide, and those quoted to insurance companies in the USA. I'm of the opinion that he medication that is supplied to pharmacy chains worldwide gets a fake pricing, and that costs are not what we think, just since the same medication from the same manufacturer has different prices in different parts of the world. Of this my experience is limited, since I only have visited 5 countries abroad but happened to check over the counter prices for a couple things. I remember I didn't know that there were private doctors that billed their practice until I was 8... I just thought every medical doctor was hired by some health care system nowadays, either the ones I personally knew at IMSS while growing and going for my scheduled vaccinations, or those represented in the Boob tube...

And getting to the matter of geography perspective, I tried to do screen captures on Google Maps trying to reproduce height over the floor, angle and heading on three areas... Water bodies and lots of countryside tend to help a lot on getting sunrise mist, and that's why I consider you very lucky for being at places that still have a decent environment, and yes, the lightning at sunset was a reason for the coloration, but the season change will make the grass turn those colors within two months...

* Edition *

Just realized the scale at the lower right corner... the 2 km height difference was not taken into account... Will check that.

[yogi]

Compared to the Guadalupe range, O'Fallon and Knoxville appear to be flatland. The photo with the Guadalupe Mountains looks as if it could be something NASA did on some other planet. They are definitely mountains but seemingly in the middle of a desert. Of course that is not true. I looked closer with a Google search and discovered there is a lot of vegetation in those mountains, much of which is obscure in the photograph(s). Gary and I seem to have a greener landscape than what is found around Mexico City, but that is understandable sine you are a lot closer to the equator than we are. The elevation of the terrain must have something to do with it as well.

[ocelotl]

At least in the immediate environment, you are true. Most of the difference depends not on the proximity to the equator. Rain forests (Jungles) are near the equator. The issue here is the building density and the overexploitation within the lakebowl, being the introduction of several kinds of Eucalypti one of the worst decisions. The population density in your vicinity is a tenth of what gets to be around here, and apart of the green landscape surroundings, your lawns contribute to keep the appearance green when looking from above. Regarding scale, the images were not correct. The 2 km height above sea level show in the scale at the lower right. this is more like it.

[yogi]

Even without the scaling factor, it always was obvious that the population density around Mexico City is much greater than most places around the world. Having noted that, there are quite a few places on earth with higher densities.

City -- density in inhabitants per square km

• Monaco -- 26,150.3
  China, Macao SAR -- 21,419.6
  Singapore -- 8,291.9
  China, Hong Kong SAR -- 7,082.1
  ...
  Mexico, Mexico City -- 6,200
  ...
  ...
  ...
  O'Fallon -- 1158
  ...
  ...
  ...
  Knoxville -- 766

I don't know what those people in Monaco are thinking, but I'm certain they can hear each other breathing.

[Kellemora]

Compared to Missouri, we are not flat here at all. It is nothing but hills after hills.
I live on the north face of Rodgers Ridge, which is one of the foothills to the Smoky Mountains.
Almost all of the roads around here go up up up and they go down down down down, and they go up up up and they go down down down down, hi hi.
Plus we have the Tail of the Dragon for those brave enough to drive it, hi hi.

[yogi]

When I suggested we live on flat land I was referring to the pictures Juan posted. The mountains by Mexico City are clearly visible from the map view but not so obvious for MO and TN. Yes, I know we have hills and foothills, but it's not all that obvious from the sky. I think it might have been Tennessee where I saw people living on the side of what looked like a mountain pass. The hills there were very steep with what appeared to be a single lane road leading up to the house in the middle of it. I had mixed feelings when I first saw that. At first thought my impression was the view is grand from that perspective, but then after driving a few miles through it all you can see is the side of the hills. We may not have anything as majestic as that around O'Fallon, but we CAN see the sky every day.