What type of clouds are these?  They passed through Forest Lake this morning.

Thanks!

Tanner

This is the first real good storm I have seen in MN since living here and got some great pictures.  I am used to some real wicked sotrms from grownig up in IL(we got a lot) but this one had some of the neatest clouds I have ever seen when it started hitting Hastings. I sent in 3 pics of the storm rolling in.   Enjoy the pics there are pretty amazing.  I hope everyone stays safe this evening :)

After there is a storm, you can always find some beauty...

The tree in the front yard is gone after the storm.

I live about three miles south of  I-94 and 101. I heard the thunder 7:45-8:40, the lighting 7:50-8:30. The storm first arrived at the house 7:50 and lasted til 8:20. It was raining and the sun was shinning around 8:15-8:20. The sky was light green as it approached then turned yellow  and is still yellow.

The amazing clouds as the storm rolled through Waverly, MN

The double rainbow after the strange clouds/mini-storm in Waverly, MN

A NEW BROOM SWEEPS CLEAN!!!

I LOVE Minnesota summer cold fronts - they are like a new broom sweeping out the old air mass and bringing in a fresh one. A front has just passes by on this early Wednesday morning. After a mild and humid start, the winds have picked up from the north and the dew points have dropped. Brings to mind a children's book by Dennis Feltgen. Do you remember him. He worked at KSTP back in the 70s thru early 80s. He now works for the National Weather Service in Miami. He wrote a book called "Smile when the Dew Point Drops" and there couldn't be more truth surrounding that command. Here's a quick scale on Dew Points and comfort.

dp 40s = Very Comfortable

      50s = Still Comfortable

      60s = Muggy

     65+ = Tropical

     70+ = Oppressive

The Dew Point is expressed as a temperature - the temperature at which the air becomes saturated. So, the higher the Dew Point, the more moist and humid feeling the air. Relative Humidity is actually a bad scale for measuring moisture discomfort because it can change during the day - high in the cool hours of the morning, lower in the warm hours of the afternoon. The Dew Point is usually steady during the day - and if it does change, like today, if it heads down you can rest assured that as Dennis Feltgen commands you can go ahead and smile because, at least on a summer day, the air will feel much more comfortable. So, as I sit and write this and the front has passed bringing in drier air, the Dew Point went from the mid 60s to near 50 - a GREAT way to enjoy 80 degree warmth!

ON THE LINKS

Wow, the other morning "MR. SMOOTH" Tom Halden and I were tearing up the links at Inver Woods in Inver Grove Heights in the first few hours after sunrise. Can I just say that THE BUGS ARE BACK. I remember being back last year for my first Minnesota summer in 25 years wondering what happened to the bugs? Needless to say, last year was an easy one in terms of the bug problem. But, this year is a whole new problem. I heard that the bugs were back, and as of about 6:30 to 7 pm each evening you can start to feel them taking free shots at your flesh. Well, that morning on the course was not much fun thanks to the fact that Inver Woods is a mix of woods and swamps (but, let me say this - it's a marvelous course that is kept in pristine condition and is an 18 hole'r that would challenge ANYONE. Apart from the bugs A LOT of fun). From the first tee Tom and I fell victim to hundreds of swarming flesheaters that would attack fast, undectectably, and leave my legs and arms finely pierced. The only reason I knew had been bitten was from finding little balls of dried blood on my skin. Unpleasant? YES!!! Especially when in the tee box setting up for a drive or trying to putt. Maybe this is why I really enjoy Fall golf! Oh,,, so what about my score? Score? Score? You don't need my stinkin' score!!! And that's pretty much what it was - a "stinking" score. Ahh, but more practice is in my future - and that's not all bad - it IS golf, ya know!

CRAZY, HAZY SKIES

Did you notice a bit of a muted sunrise the last few mornings? Wildfires in Sasketchewan are producing enough sky-filling smoke to haze up our atmosphere, helping to create a more reddish-orange solar disk (sun) and a more diffuse light around sunrise. If the evening skies are clear, you'll notice a little more dramatic sunset as well.

Til next time,

Erik

As we stagger through these first days of summer, I look out my front door and see rock.   A lot of rock.   A pile of rock in my driveway that appears to get smaller every evening, but then looks mockingly larger the next afternoon.  ... ...

A week ago we had 8 tons of landscaping rock dumped on our driveway (see my last post) ... I have somehow moved & spread approx. 13 tons ... ??? How is this possible? Is my rock breeding right there in my driveway? Are my crafty neighbors sneaking up the driveway in the night & cackling as they add to the pile?  Has my stoney mound created enough of a gravitation pull that rock from the nearby quarry tumbles my way when no one is looking?

... or perhaps I just need to keep on shoveling ...

-Keith

George Carlin's "The Planet Is Fine" :

We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these bleeping people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the bleeping planet?

I'm getting tired of that bleep. Tired of that bleep. I'm tired of bleeping Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a bleep about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are bleeped. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

We're going away. Pack your bleep, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. You wanna know if the planet's all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...bleephole.

So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that's begun. Don't you think that's already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let's see... Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh...viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction. 

Well, that's a poetic note. And it's a start. And I can dream, can't I? See I don't worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we're part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron...whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn't punish, it doesn't reward, it doesn't judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while."

THAT'S SOME HOT STUFF

It's pretty,,, AND pretty deadly. When out on weather talks at schools and community events I'm always asked about Lightning and Lightning Safety. Well, as I always say "The best way to be safe is to be prepared". I also say "Common sense is ANYTHING but common!" So, when it comes to lightning, it's actually a matter of being prepared AND using common sense.

First of all, here's a bit of lightning trivia. Only the width of a pencil a lightning bolt can burn at 10 times hotter than the surface of the sun. That's a whopping 50-55,000 degrees fahrenheit. Lightning is nothing more than a spark - it allows the equalization of the electrical charge between the clouds and the ground. And thunder? Well, that's the sound of the air that surrounds the lightning bolt explosively heating to the extreme temperature of the lightning bolt.

Now, for safety. Lightning is a true killer. I was working in Iowas when a young boy in my area was killed by something called a "bolt from the blue". He was getting the mail at the end of a long rural driveway after morning storms had been gone for more than 15 minutes. He was still struck by lightning even though the storms were miles away. He never made it back up the driveway with the mail. As its name implies, the sky can be blue with storms either approaching or leaving an area and being up to 10 miles away. Lightning can still leave the parent storm and head miles in any direction, leaving you unsafe even though the storms are nowhere near you.

Safety around lightning is such an important issue that the National Weather Service sponsors "Lightning Safety Week" every year. It's next week and I've included a link to the safety and information page. 8 people have already been killed by lightning in 2008 after a lightning death toll of 45 in 2007.

Be Prepared: Know when the weather will turn bad in your area. Use common sense: Don't be outside or in a lightning prone area when the storms roll thru.

Erik

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/p>

THAT'S SOME HOT STUFF

It's pretty,,, AND pretty deadly. When out on weather talks at schools and community events I'm always asked about Lightning and Lightning Safety. Well, as I always say "The best way to be safe is to be prepared". I also say "Common sense is ANYTHING but common!" So, when it comes to lightning, it's actually a matter of being prepared AND using common sense.

First of all, here's a bit of lightning trivia. Only the width of a pencil a lightning bolt can burn at 10 times hotter than the surface of the sun. That's a whopping 50-55,000 degrees fahrenheit. Lightning is nothing more than a spark - it allows the equalization of the electrical charge between the clouds and the ground. And thunder? Well, that's the sound of the air that surrounds the lightning bolt explosively heating to the extreme temperature of the lightning bolt.

Now, for safety. Lightning is a true killer. I was working in Iowas when a young boy in my area was killed by something called a "bolt from the blue". He was getting the mail at the end of a long rural driveway after morning storms had been gone for more than 15 minutes. He was still struck by lightning even though the storms were miles away. He never made it back up the driveway with the mail. As its name implies, the sky can be blue with storms either approaching or leaving an area and being up to 10 miles away. Lightning can still leave the parent storm and head miles in any direction, leaving you unsafe even though the storms are nowhere near you.

Safety around lightning is such an important issue that the National Weather Service sponsors "Lightning Safety Week" every year. It's next week and I've included a link to the safety and information page. 8 people have already been killed by lightning in 2008 after a lightning death toll of 45 in 2007.

Be Prepared: Know when the weather will turn bad in your area. Use common sense: Don't be outside or in a lightning prone area when the storms roll thru.

Erik

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/p>

... the last few days of Spring are upon us ... Summer "officially" begins on Friday at 6:59pm with the Solstice ... and I'm ready!

If you ever watch me, you know I'm partial to slightly hotter & muggier conditions ... I'm not a fan of "oppressive", but good 80s & 90s are a preference for me.  It makes working outside feel more "real"? ... I don't know ... remember, I grew up in the South, so perhaps working up a good sweat in the Summer is just hardwired into my DNA ...

I'll be doing quite a bit of that this week ... with our pleasant stretch ahead of us, we have roughly a gazabillion tons of rock ready to be dumped via dump-truck on my driveway,  creating a large (and mocking) mountain of  stone just waiting to be wheel-barrowed around the yard ...

... hooray!? 

I dont want anyone to think its not good to be informed, but breaking in every twenty minutes with repetitive weather alerts is making me upset.  Your meterologist is like  a broken record and speaks so slowly it makes each report long, boring, and not worth breaking into my favorite program.  And when it came time to report on something worthy towards the end of the program - she couldnt give it the time it deserved because she had cried wolf 4 times before.  On top of that it seems a little self-indulgent to break in 5 mintues - even 12 minutes before your own program.  I appreciate you keeping us informed, but think of a storm tracker at the bottom of the screen and quit trying to create fear and dram - and report only when neccessary!!!  Remember what happend to Peter when he cried wolf

Werner J.C.

You haven't figured it out on how to save on gas?

Drive slower ... slow down and look at the scenery once in a while as you drive into work or to the grocery store.
Maybe if people would slow down and take time to smell the roses then there would be less crabbiness in the world today.

Think about it .... and it's not just the gas problems either. I keep hearing people say , "Geez, I cannot believe it's already Memorial Day and the 4th of July is just around the corner ... seems like time is flying by so fast."

That's because if people would just slow down a bit, enjoy the time you have and take things a little slower then maybe time won't go by as fast as it seems.

Just think about it !