Lake Erie freezes over

I'm an admitted weather geek, so I found this time-lapse video of Lake Erie freezing over in a three-day span fascinating.

First snow of the season!

In Montana, at least.......

A dusty day in the Great Plains

Strong winds and dry conditions have created blinding dust storms in Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma today.

I-35 just south of the Kansas border has been shut down after a multi-vehicle pile-up. I'm hearing there are injuries and perhaps even a death.

Cognizant of the wind threat today, and recognizing the wind would be worse this afternoon and evening, I returned to Wichita from the farm this morning. Fields were already blowing by 9 a.m., but highways weren't obscured for more than a second at worst.

Things had deteriorated significantly by the time my brother was driving back late this afternoon. He said the dust had dropped visibility to zero several times on his drive home, and he still had another 60 miles to go.

Days like today offer hints of life during the Dust Bowl, and always remind me of this classic song:

First snow of the season for Wichita?

There's an old fable that says the date on which a city receives its first snowfall tells you how many snows the coming winter will bring.

If it's true, then snowfall won't be commonplace in Wichita this winter. That is, if the forecast for snow flurries on Wednesday - All Souls Day, November 2 - proves accurate.

Then again, if the saying refers to measurable snowfall, then the wait figures to continue for Wichita. The flurries aren't likely to pile up late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.



And, no, this photo wasn't taken in southern Kansas. It is just a nice shot of snow I came across. Makes me want to put on some snowshoes, go for a hike and then come back to a fireplace and some hot chocolate!

An eminently avoidable tragedy

As most of you reading this blog likely already know, strong winds collapsed a stage at the Indiana State Fair this weekend, killing five and injuring dozens more. Here is video of the stage collapse, in case you haven't seen it.



Details of how this tragedy unfolded are still murky - separating fact from rumor always takes time in the aftermath. Strong winds have collapsed stages at outdoor events several times in the past few months, so this can't be dismissed as a freak of nature.

There's no excuse for organizers not to have access to the National Weather Service or a private forecasting service to receive detailed information about when and how severe weather may impact a given event. I've heard AccuWeather warned clients in Indianapolis of the gust front's arrival at least an hour before it arrived.

I'm reading that authorities were preparing to evacuate the stage and grandstand in anticipation of the strongest winds arriving at around 9:15 p.m. --- only the fatal gust front arrived nearly a half-hour before the National Weather Service predicted. Were authorities negligent in waiting so long? I have a feeling lawsuits will attempt to answer that question.

I've read that law enforcement officials at the fairgrounds were using radar imagery from their smartphones to help monitor conditions. That imagery may not have been sophisticated enough to show the gust front out in front of the strong thunderstorms. And even if they were, would the officials know enough about meteorology to recognize what that front looked like (or signified) on radar? Most folks aren't.

This year has been filled with far too many examples of people making poor choices when faced with severe weather...and paying an awfully high price for it.

For those of you who are tired of all those TV station promos.......

...........you'll get a chuckle out of this.......

In like a lamb.........

March came in like a lamb on Tuesday. Warm, sunny, delightful.

Does this mean it'll go out like a lion? It seems to me March always goes out like a lion, if only because my birthday is at the end of the month and the weather almost universally sucks on our birthday. As far as I'm concerned, the old adage should actually be, March: In like a lion, out like a lion.

Oh, by the way, I did say "our." I'm a twin (for readers who may not know). No, we're not identical. And, no, we're not that much alike.

Check back at the end of the month for the answer to my question.

A fresh reminder that anyone can be elected to the U.S. Senate

Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, offered this evidence as proof that global warming was reaching dangerous levels: it had been over 100 degrees for three straight days....in February...in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!

Um, Barbara? Brazil is in the southern hemisphere, and February is their version of our August. Rio routinely tops 100 in February.

Now, that gaffe isn't likely to earn Boxer a spot in Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" list on his MSNBC show --- but I wouldn't be shocked if Bill O'Reilly crowned her a "pinhead" for that doozy.


Sigh......

Reflections on a summer Saturday

I would be returning to the city later in the day, but buckets of freshly picked ears of sweet corn demanded my attention at this given moment on our family farm.


I stripped husks from the ears, eliciting screeching sounds from the leaves as I pulled. Silk clung stubbornly and stickily to the yellow kernels.


A southerly breeze suddenly appeared, notable not just for the cool freshness on my back but for the way it clattered through the trees in the yard.


This, I thought as I glanced up, is summer in full blossom. As the wind whipped through the leaves, it sounded much like raindrops on a roof...or applause building, peaking and ebbing at a stage show.

Off to the east, clouds were erupting and darkening, and I knew Larned and Great Bend would soon get rain. Rarely is moisture unwelcome in farm country - when it halts a harvest, say, or aggravates a flooding risk - but I knew farmers east of our place would smile even as the sky grew increasingly angry.

These weren't tornado clouds, they were just a hearty summer shower in the making. My goddaughter, Rachel, was helping me clean the corn, and I told her to close her eyes and listen...to the wind, the leaves, the birds.

To summer.

"Oh, yeah," she said after several moments, a smile spreading on her face. "That's cool."