• Tag Archives Weather +Climate

  • Mammatus and Derechos

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    66  bar steep rise 29.68  0mph NW dew-point 64  Summer, muggy night

    Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

    Another line of storms moved out of the north west, along I-94.  They hit us about 8 PM, the skies green like pale mashed peas.  Kate noticed some mammatus clouds and a lightning display in the east, already headed toward someone else.  There were tornado touchdowns, far away this time.  These storms are our tsunamis, our earthquakes, our hurricanes.

    They come here because of our location, our spot on the globe.  They usually spawn from cool arctic air meeting humid Gulf of Mexico air drawn up by circulating lows.  Their paths have a general line, north west to south east, but the specific spots along the way that experience damage varies wildly.  A couple of storms ago a tornado touched down south of us about 2 miles.  A couple of years ago a tornado hit an eastern part of Andover.  That may have been the storm which hit us with hail, requiring new siding and a new roof.

    If a tornado hits your house, it may as well have been a tsunami, a hurricane or an earthquake.  The damage will be considerable, your life in danger.  Straight line winds generated by wall clouds can and do reach ground speeds of 90 mph.  In the first four years after we bought this house we had two straight line winds that took out several large trees in our woods.

    In certain instances these are derechos. The bow-shaped echoes that get meteorologists excited are distinguishing characteristics.  So are sustained straight lines above 58 mph, over a long front.  These are mostly a North American storm.


    📂This entry was posted in Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • 240,000 Miles and Still Happy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    58  bar falls 29.74  10mph E  dew-point 56  Beltane, cloudy and raining

                             First Quarter of the Flower Moon

    Since this has been and will be a traveling month, I’ve been attentive to weather nation-wide.  It’s amazing to sit here looking outside at my garden where the vegetables are slow to mature because of cool weather while the east, south and southwest have had hot hot hot.  The red looked like a child had decided to color the U.S. by starting down the eastern seaboard and then moving along the bottom of the map, went up a state or two, then went on west.  Red all the way.

    The automobile is my primary mode of transportation.  Train second.  Air a distant third and then only for speed or an impossible distance.  The former is the reason for air to Texas in July, the latter found me in a plane for Hawai’i. 

    When I travel by car, I pay attention to the Weather Channel like a pilot watches the isobars.  It looks like my luck will be good.  The very hot weather system seems ready to break up into more seasonal summer temps.  I’m glad.

    Took the little red car into the dealer today for an oil change (they like me, they really really like me) and discovered that the head gasket seep has become a full fledged leak.  That means a head gasket and head grinding when I return plus I have to check the oil every other gas stop.  Even though I repaired my air conditioning after 5 years without it (kept thinking I’d get rid of the Celica, but it kept working.), the heat still makes travel uncomfortable and it does reduce gas mileage. 

    I  told Scott at Carlson Toyota I don’t begrudge the Celica few repairs at 240,000 miles.  Still a hell of a lot cheaper than a new car and I get 30-32 mpg on the road.

    While we’re on the subject of mechanical devices, my computer now makes a reluctant noise when I boot up, as if it doesn’t want to get up yet.  At first it made me think:  Hard drive!  Bad.  Even though I back-up daily.  Then, on the web I found that it’s probably not the hard drive, but the cooling system.  Time for a little fresh air in the old computer case.  I like this machine.  It’s just right for my needs even though it is now 3 years old.  Like the Celica I feel I may have it a while.


    📂This entry was posted in GeekWorld Travel Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Turn the Radio On and Listen to the Indy 500

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    62  bar falls 29.74 2mph NW dew-point 35 Beltane, Sunny

                          Full Hare Moon

    Memorial Day is this weekend and we’re still stuck back in early April.  I can recall other chilly Memorial Days, but none with the degree of regular cool air this year has had.

    Since it’s Memorial Day, that means it’s Indy 500 time.  I’ll watch again this year.  The race used to take a liesurely 3-4 hours to run, now it routinely finishes between 2-3.  Though I found growing up in Indiana a strange experience, it left two indelible marks on my character.  I’m still fascinated with those big guys bouncing the orange ball up and down a hardwood floor.  I’m also ready, every Memorial Day, to turn into race fan for a day.

    I only went to the race once, with my Dad, in the early 60’s or late 50’s.  The Novi engine was a Dual Overhead Cam Supercharged V8 engine, a monster driven by Jim Hurtubise.  As it came out of the fourth curve, Hurtubise would hit the accelerator for the long main straightaway.  The supercharger would kick in and an internal combustion growl would echo off the seats and reverberate until the car was well past the starting line over half a mile away.  All of us who love the race, loved that engine.  It never won, not once, but it was thing of beauty. 

    Most Memorial Days I would go out to the family car with crackers and cheese, comic books and a coke.  I would turn on the radio and settle in to listen.  For the month leading up to the race the Indianapolis Star carried detailed sports page coverage and I saved those pages, too, including them in my cache.  I especially liked the rainy days when I could sit in the car, sheltered from the weather and listen to the roar of the engines as the cars hurtled around the track.

    China.  Burma.  A 7.9 earthquake.  A major cyclone with another brewing in the waters of the Indian Ocean.  Unimaginable suffering.  No.  Wait.  Katrina.  Iraq.  Not unimaginable, just far away.  Burma has Pagan, a city with 2,500 Buddhist temples.  It has Mandalay where the flying fishes play.  It has Rangoon, home of a gold topped stupa.  It also has a paranoid junta, more concerned with power than the people.  China’s Sichuan region, home to fiery foods and a unique brand of Chinese culture, mountains (the shan) and proximity to a collision between the Indian tectonic plate and the Pacific.  The folding creates the shan in China and the Himalayas.  It also slips, the enormous pressures of the earth’s mantle put out of joint and indescribable power releases, a spring in the expected stability of the ground on which we walk.

    There are advantages to a spot near the center of the North American tectonic plate, far from either the Atlantic or the Pacific.


    📂This entry was posted in Memories Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Oh, Dear

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    31!  bar steep rise 29.62 2mph S dewpoint 27 Spring?  Snow

                           Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

    OK now.  That’s enough!  I woke up, looked out the window on April 26th, just 5 days before Beltane, the beginning of the Celtic summer, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but snow, snow, snow.  Oh, dear.

    To season the irony, I leave in a few minutes for the Arboretum and a day devoted to the Natural Rhythms of Time.  I guess if it happened, it’s not unnatural, but the snow feels like it has come outside the natural rhythms.  I don’t know what to expect from this day, but the notion of natural rhythms and a cyclical view of time are important to my own, still evolving sense of the cosmos.

    No wonder the moon of growing has begun to wane.  It’s retreating before the Hawthorn giant as he takes a return visit, stomping around and shaking his shaggy head.  I can just hear him laugh.

    My hydroponic setup continues to evolve.  I’d say I should have edible lettuce by the end of next week. The tomato plant I put the under the light first is over 8 inches tall and leafing out more and more every day.  The morning glories and cucumbers have begun a stretch toward the light, which means I need to reposition the megafarm under the light and move Emilies over.  This is addictive.  I can tell because I’m already planning how to  make my own setup out of parts I can buy at Interior Gardens.

    The piece that gets me is the growth and maturation of plants from seed.  It never fails to excite me when I see a seedling appear.  Not quite the same as that cute Gabe, but the principles are very much the same.  DNA works its magic. 


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • A Sixty Degree Temperature Swing

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    24  87%  21%  0mph  SSW  bar29.96  steady  Winter

               Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

    As the winter moon wanes, a warm up heads our way.  Tomorrow the temperature will hit 40.  That’s a sixty degree swing within the week.  Not unusual for Minnesota, but impressive anyhow.  I’ve read that we have the most significant temperature and weather type fluctuations of anywhere on earth, though Siberia is similar.  That’s Siberia.  As in the place to which you were exiled as to the lonliest and most inclement place on earth from Moscow.  One of the most inclement places on earth.  So….

    On this point Paul Douglas, local weather sage, whose long term eye is better than his short term one, has a website up that is worth a visit, www.climatespot.com. I’ve added it to the blogroll, too.

    The sun shines today and small dimples have begun to show up at the base of trees, shrubs and the winter remnants of last year’s flower garden.  As the weather warms, the snow sinks away first at the point where something that can warm up meets the ground.  I hope that this warm up will bring a fresh snowfall, one that will fill in the dimples and freshen up the sagging snow.  It looks, and feels, like early March, deceptive though.  In March I can look out the window, notice the same changes and get the feeling, as I did momentarily this morning, plants have begun to stir underneath, that buds will open on trees and maybe a few early daffodils and the bloodroot will break the ground.  In March that is a fond hope, one with the chance of reality in a month or so, two at most.  In late January, not true.  February can have cold and snow like January.  March often has big snow, but the snow doesn’t last.  That feeling today only leads to dis-ease.  It is not a hope that can sustain itself in the near term future.

    I continue my study of Taoism, look for some new additions to the Taoism pages. 


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Garden Great Wheel Our Land and Home 📎and tagged

  • So, whadd’ya think anyhow?

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    41  50%   36%  4mph windroseNNE  bar steady  dewpoint23  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

    Bill Schmidt found the weather plug-in which now inhabits the right side of the page.  Thanks, Bill.

    If any you who read this would like to comment on the new site, as it is or compared to the old one, I’m interested in your thoughts.  One of the reason I switched to WordPress was the easy availablity of the discussion function.  So, discuss away if you have a mind.


    📂This entry was posted in GeekWorld 📎and tagged