a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It’s February of 2019, and the cold in the Midwest is easing.
We’re about to get a spell of cold weather on Sunday and into Monday here in Seattle. We might even see snow on the ground in the city. It’s a good time of year to be a creature with a floofy, fluffy coat!
The polar vortex is pushing down into the Midwest of the continental United States, and will bring the frigidest temperatures in 20 years, to many locations.
Meteorologists had to debunk Trump’s idiotic tweet from Monday, in which he ‘called’ on global warming to ‘Please come back fast, we need you’.
As NASA explains in a Climate for Kids video, weather is only temporary, while climate describes the typical weather conditions in an entire region for a very long time – 30 years or more.
| City | Expected Low | With Windchill |
|---|---|---|
| Minneapolis, MN | -30°F -34°C | -54°F -48°C |
| Chicago, IL | -23°F -30°C | -51°F -46°C |
| St Louis, MO | -4°F -20°C | -22°F -30°C |
| Cincinnati, OH | +2°F -16°C | -16°F -26°C |
| Washington, D.C. | +18°F -7°C | +11°F -11°C |
| Seattle, WA | +34°F +1°C | +34°F +1°C |
Sigh* .. at least Trump visited California (on Saturday), and saw the devastation firsthand. He seemed to get along swimmingly with the new Governor-elect of California, Gavin Newsom. This after he had been pretty rude to him in Tweets in the past. (Gossip: Could it be because Newsom’s ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle now dates Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.?).
*Trump felt the need to repeat his ‘assessment’ of California’s forest management: ‘In Finland they rake the forest floors’. (This baffles the Finns, and prompted a denial from the Finnish president that he had ever told Trump that). Then Trump got the devastated town’s name wrong, calling Paradise ‘Pleasure’, instead. When he did it a second time, FEMA administrator Brock Long (and Governor Jerry Brown) could no longer stand it and corrected him loudly.
Cape Town’s dam levels hit the 70% mark on Monday for the first time since 2015. The severe water restrictions that had been in place, have been relaxed, albeit just by a little*.  The rainy season is coming to an end in September, and a long dry summer lies ahead.
*The City is asking residents to use no more than 70 liters (18.5 US gal) per person per day, up from a 50-liter (13 US gal) limit.
The areas south of New Bern and Wilmington have recorded 30 inches of rain, and the rain is still pouring down. Not surprisingly, many roads and streets are flooded, and there are widespread power outages as well.
Thu 11.00 pm EDT: Florence has not made landfall yet (50 miles from the coast) .. now a Category 2, so the storm’s wind speeds have come down, but there will still be a lot of water to deal with*. Up to a third of the people in some communities have elected to stay put, in spite of the evacuation order. Time will tell if that was wise. (Some people had no place to go, or no means to evacuate, though).
*4.9 million people live in areas that will get more than 10 inches of rain over the next 5 days.
Fri 11.00 pm EDT: Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina at 7:15 AM EDT on Friday. By late afternoon, several hundred people had been rescued, and 5 deaths directly related to the storm, had been reported. Many of the streams and rivers in the storm’s footprint are expected to crest at record levels downstream.
‘Let us withdraw, ’twill be a storm’. – William Shakespeare tweet this morning (from King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4)
We’re all on Florence watch here, even the West coasters. (Hurricanes do not hit the West Coast, due to the direction of global winds, and the Pacific Ocean’s water temperature).  Hurricane Florence is bearing down on North Carolina. The latest models show that it might rake the coastline after coming close to the mainland, resulting in a 9-13 ft storm surge from the ocean. This, combined with upwards of 30 inches of rain in some areas will make for wide-spread flooding of low-lying areas. Some of the long narrow barrier islands off the coast will be run over completely with seawater. About 1 million people along the coast are under mandatory evacuation orders.
The smoky, unhealthy air that had blanketed the city since Sunday night, finally cleared up today.
There was a sprinkle of rain this morning, but I watered the garden later on in the day, as well.
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
– Lyrics from ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ (1977), by Electric Light Orchestra
The air quality for today (and expected for tomorrow), for the Puget Sound region, is pretty much the worst on record*. Winds from the north and from the east have carried vast plumes of smoke and PM2.5 particles from the raging wildfires in Canada and Eastern Washington, to the region.
*An air quality value of 218 is reported tonight in my neck of the woods, which is in the ‘Very Unhealthy’ category.
I wanted to know where the phrase ‘the dog days of summer’ comes from – and if there is a date range associated with it. Well, it is a reference to the star system Sirius, and yes, there is a date range related to it.
2017 was a bad wildfire year in California, and 2018 is probably going to be worse. One of the state’s worst wildfires ever, rage near Redding, home to 92,000 people. More than 1,000 homes have now been burnt to the ground, and 6 people (including two firefighters) have lost their lives.
We had 90°F (32°C) here in the city today, and we will reach 93°F (34°C) on Sunday before it will finally start to cool down.
There’s a heat wave in Tokyo (102°F/ 39°C); it’s hot and dry in Northern Europe, and in the southern United States as well. Even here in Seattle the forecast says we are in for a seven-day stretch of day temperatures exceeding 88°F (31°C).
The weatherman says we’re going to hit 86°F (30°C) on Sunday.
July & August are dry months in Seattle with ¾ in. of rain each, on average. (As much as 5 or 6 in. of rain may fall each month from November through January).
The little patch of lawn in front of my house is already dry and mostly yellow. I only water the beds and potted plants in the backyard; not the lawn.
There is widespread snow in South Africa – always a novelty in a country with a sunny climate, sunny even in winter.
I never saw snow up close while growing up in South Africa. Yes, one would see it far away on the mountains some winters, and my mom told would tell me that when I was 5 years old, there was snow at my grandparents’ home in Johannesburg.
My hydrangea is still going strong, and its beautiful summer flowers are coloring up.
We have had summery weather this May. It has been drier and hotter than normal all month here in the Pacific Northwest.
Residents of Cape Town recorded a record low water usage of 505 million litres (133 million US gals) for the city per day for last week. Still, the target is 450 million litres per day (50 litres/ 13 US gallons per person per day).
Day Zero (no water for faucets) continues to be pushed out, and the winter rainy season has started – but it is still uncertain how much rain it will bring.
The day temperature got up to 82 °F (28°C) on Thursday, tying the calendar day record for Seattle set back in 1947. But now our little Indian summer is over, and we will drop back to 66°F (18°C) on Friday, and even lower over the weekend.
It was a beautiful Monday here in Seattle, and there is more sunshine ahead in the next few days, say the meteorologists.
