I'm John Bachelor to Lancaster County, the best county in the Keystone State.

As Lancaster goes, so goes goes the Keystone State, Pennsylvania. As Pennsylvania goes, so goes the East Coast and the economy of the

United States. Here we are in that in between, we're not at war, we are at war, and the price of

gasoline again is part of the story. I welcome my colleague and reporting friend from Lancaster,

Jim McTague, formerly Washington editor of Barron's Magazine,

now a novelist in Lancaster.

We begin with the weather, however.

Determining how Lancaster does in summertime turns out to be a question of weather. Jim, a very good evening to you.

There's El Nino in the Pacific. There's a heat wave in Europe. How is it in Lancaster these past days?

Good day to you, Jim. Good day, John. You know, the Midwest is dishing it out to us. All these lines of

thunderstorms that you read about that are battering the Midwest

end up coming through Pennsylvania. So since July 4th weekend, we've had rolling thunderstorms,

violent storms, almost every day of the week. Over the 4th of July weekend, we had close to four inches of rain.

Trees were knocked down on the power lines. So tens of thousands of people had no power.

38 roads in my immediate area were closed off. And other parts of the county also saw road shut down because of fallen trees.

So the weather was very disruptive to tourism and the economy in the short run. Let me add that

all the hotels in Lancaster are pretty much sold out this weekend.

So people get away for the holiday, although Jim's theory for some time has been they were going

to get away closer to home than they would have without the war. I mentioned Jim, those thunderstorms,

we had one ripped through the Duchess County come over the hill down here

into Connecticut, and they were reporting 80 mile per hour winds in parts of the storms.

Did you hear anything like that in your storms?

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