The Heat Dome

    We have been hearing about a weather phenomenon which I had never heard named before. It is an extended and severe heat wave that is centered in the Central United States and has been named, "A Heat Dome."  Basically it is a very high pressure area which is trapped in the middle of the United States, over the prairie states: Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa and Illinois. It has trapped very hot and humid air up from the Gulf of Mexico, compressed it, heating it up even more. It then expanded to include Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and it is now slowly drifting eastward. A combination of factors combined to produce this strange (to me) meteorological phenomenon. First the high pressure in this Midwest area was indeed very high so that no weather systems trying to move in from the West were strong enough to move it on. Also the jet stream is very far north and fairly weak at this time of year. So prevailing winds could not move it out. Thirdly there was a mild tropical storm area off the Southeast of the United States and that was blocking this high pressure system from spreading to the southeast. The humidity was especially high during this phenomenon because of all the recent wet weather and flooding in the upper Midwest, adding to the humidity in the air. Apparently "heat domes" are not rare, but it is rare for one to be this large (affecting 30+ states) and this long lasting (so far 5 days, probably up to 7 or 8.)

     Characteristics of this "Heat Dome" in the Milwaukee area are absolute temperatures in the 90s and in some areas even up to 100, and humidity levels of 70% and 80%. Heat indices (the combination of the temperature and the humidity) make a human feel like the temperature is much higher, well into the hundreds, as high as 115 and 120 in some areas. The Midwest has had at least 13 deaths directly related to the heat through these last 5 days. The heat is going to continue in the Midwest but the humidity has gone down some. Temperatures will be in the upper 80s in Wisconsin through the weekend. But now this heat phenomenon is spreading to the eastern states. 

     Since record deaths occurred in the Chicago area during a protracted heat wave in 1995, our city took all sorts of precautions. Various air conditioned cooling centers were opened. The libraries opened early and stayed open late as did the various pools and other water features. Multiple warnings were issued on TV and radio, suggesting that people try to get to a cool place for several hours each day. The signs and symptoms of heat injury were played and replayed.

     Well we were not satisfied to just sit at the edge of this phenomenon. My husband and I along with my sister had planned to take my 93 year old mother down into central Illinois to visit my aunt, my father's sister who is in a nursing home down there. We debated whether to cart this 93 year old woman along with us. The news media is constantly issuing warnings about the elderly during this heat wave. She saw no reason for concern and wanted to go. We would be fine in an air conditioned car, restaurants, motel, home, and nursing home. But what if something went wrong with the car. We have a car in good condition, but you never know. Well, we decided to treat it as though it were in the dead of winter, except the precautions we took were just the opposite. We packed all sorts of containers and coolers with ice water, cold beverages and ice cubes. I took towels and handkerchiefs we could moisten with the ice water and put around our neck. I carried umbrellas to provide shade because we certainly would not be able to sit in a disabled car without the engine and AC running. My AAA membership is up to date and I charged my cell phone up. We could only hope that if our car became disabled, the AAA or other authorities would be quick to respond.

      So we drove down into the "HEAT DOME"! When we arrived at our destination, the first thing we did was check into our motel to make sure their air conditioners were up to par and they were. Well, everything went OK. We visited the ill aunt, and spent time visiting with her daughter and her family in their nicely air conditioned home. Our cousin offered us the use of their outdoor swimming pool but she said the water was the temperature of bath water. Some did take advantage however. We drove back home today. When we got to Milwaukee, we learned that a weak "cold" front had moved through. The temperature was 89 degrees and the humidity level was down to 68%. I called my mother, told her we had made it home after dropping her off, and that we were so chilled that we had put on our sweaters. Sarcasm! Well the heat warnings have left the State of Wisconsin but it is still going to be in the upper 80s and very muggy the next 3 days at least. 

     We usually set our air conditioner to about 75 degrees, but we have ceiling fans in every room. Running them makes 75 or 76 degrees feel much cooler. For anyone building a new home, that would be my strongest recommendation -- buy fans. Well, I now need to go out in the cooler early evening air and water my poor potted plants. They must wonder what's going on. They sometimes need watering 2-3 times a day in this heat especially if there is a hot wind blowing.

Memorable Weather -- 2011

     The weather has been making quite a bit of national news over the last week. A huge storm, one of the largest that many meteorologists have seen in their career, stretching across the entire mid section of the United states, causing snow and sleet, and freezing rain even in Dallas where our Super Bowl will play in two days. Stretching all the way up to the plains states, to Green Bay and Milwaukee, home to the Green Bay Packers, and then moving slowly out toward Pittsburgh, home of the opposing team, the Steelers. First people who were trying to get to Dallas could not get out of Milwaukee and other midwestern airports. Then finally after about 26 inches of snow over 2 days here, after much work getting shoveled out of our driveways, and getting moving on side streets and freeways, taking a whole day to get our airport open, fans were able to start to fly out. Then Dallas got a second storm of 6 inches or so which paralyzes that area again, and again the midwestern and eastern visitors and fans can't get into Dallas. Meanwhile large chunks of ice fall off the top of the new domed stadium in Irving, TX where the game is to be played, and injures some people on the ground. What is going on with the weather?
     Of course, we have Green Bay Packers media frenzy going on here. One piece of coverage related to two men (should I say crazy men?) who met at the NFC Championship Bears/Packers game in Chicago and probably under the cover of a somewhat inebriated conversation made plans to drive an old Cadillac Eldorado convertible down to Dallas. Now this convertible is old and now has no top, not even a canvas one to pop up.  http://offthebench.nbcsports.com/2011/02/01/idiots-loyal-packer-fans-driving-from-lambeau-field-to-dallas-in-convertable/ So the owner has somehow fastened a surf board lengthwise onto the top of the car. These two guys somehow made up some head gear that was a mix between stocking caps, a mohawk down the middle shaped something like a yellow footbal helmut. The story showed them leaving for Dallas for a roadtrip to Dallas. Well, this open convertible was not going to make it anywhere near Dallas. No way, not with this storm of the decade or maybe even half century working its way across the country's midsection. These two guys and their ideas, no doubt born when reason was not high in the conversation, would not succeed easily. We have not heard anything more about them. No doubt they had to hole up in a motel somewhere and it would have to be a hotel or motel that had some sort of covered parking. Otherwise that convertible would just fill up with snow. I saw in today's newspaper that these two crazies made it to Dallas, and were photographed taking part in a fan event. They don't even have tickets to the Super Bowl. Like a lot of Packers fans they just want to play a part in the celebration down there. They made is down there in spite of all the snow storms on the way.
     The media called this storm one of 4 of the largest and with the highest wind speed of all storms. My mother heard the reporters citing the years in which these three other bad storms occurred. She heard 1936. So then she began to ask herself what she was doing in 1936 and what did she recall about a big storm. She recalled very astutely that she had just graduated from high school the June before. And she had found a job with National Lock in Rockford, IL. She had only been hired a week or so before. So she had to get into work. So her father, my Grandpa Harry got their old Model T car dug out of the bran, and they got on Route 20, a then 2 way road between Freeport and Rockford, IL. They lucked out and got behind a snow plow and just followed it into Rockford. Mom was working the second shift so Grandpa just took her right to the factory. She had made it to work. Now she says she realizes that then her father had to drive all the way back to Pecatonica, without the benefit of the snowplow. She doesn't recall worrying about that then, but she thought of that now. Well, obviously he made it. It is just quite interesting that my mother can recall this with complete accuracy even now. She is now 93 years old, widowed and living by herself in her little 3 bedroom ranch house even though she is blind from macular degeneration. But she is dong fine by herself. She still bakes cookies for church bake sales, and does her own cooking and cleaning. We have been calling her dialy through the storm days and so have neighbors to make sure she is OK. She is no doubt lonely and shut in from the storm but she is surviving. Just another view of this storm from the inside and from the eyes of a very old woman.
     Well, it's Super Bowl Sunday. It's snowing outside again here, but this time it is just a gentle light snow. We are only supposed to get about an inch. This afternoon we have been watching the lead up show. The Super Bowl is huge. It is a big celebrity event. Though the game is the center of the conversation, it's like all the bruhaha happening outside the stadium seems to have taken over. I guess I never noticed this when I didn't care about either of the teams that were playing. But now its our Packers. We should be only talking about them and the game, right? Expectations totally change.  GO PACKERS!!! I'll be back on this blog about the game if we win. If we don't, you'll not hear another word about it here.

Fall is in the air!

How to tell its fall!! Here in Wisconsin, we have had one of the hottest summers on record and statistics are similar across the country at least from the Rocky Mountains east to the Atlantic coast. But a front has gone through and now the air is cooler, there is a wonderful breeze! Some people would call it a wind. We are opening the windows and turning off the AC. This year's two young eagles are practicing their flying. One landed on our neighbors' chimney and my husband caught a picture or two. It is still so exciting to see those birds as our neighbors here on Lake Michigan.  The purple coneflowers outside my dinette window are turning chocolate brown as they end their flowering season. But there are gold finches in droves on the seed heads. The gold finches nest late and therefore are probably still feeding their fledgelings. I hear our neighborhood bluebirds occasionally give their bubbling song and they are hunting in our backyard. Of course, these may be northerners moved in on their way south. Today I heard a wren singing. That usually doesn't happen in September. The little bird must feel the same invigoration that I feel with the lowered temperatures and humidity. A hummingbird is making the rounds of the flower heads. It comes around the corner of the dinette where there is a window cranked widely open to catch the refreshing breeze. The little buzzing bird stops in midair as only they can do and looks in the open window. It obviously sees something different than its usual rounds. Then it quickly moves on. These little birds with their high metabolism and need for constant nutrition, with their complex tiny brains that keep track of all the flowers they visit and the time it will take for each flower to reacccumulate its nectar, can notice tiny little changes on their daily rounds. There are apples on our flowering crabapple tree and every morning a doe and her two half grown fawns visit the tree to get what apples they can, the doe standing on her hind feet to reach those on the lower branches, the fawns of course eating off the ground. I haven't seen any signs of the males yet but that will come shortly as the males enter the rutting season. They will strut across our yard, neck muscles standing out and looking like kings of the deer world, seeking the females that are receptive.  Monarchs are starting to move south along the Lake Michigan bluff. I must remember the broad wing hawk migration at Concordia University along Lake Michigan. It is usually around September 18 or within 5 days each side of that date, when a cool front with a Northwest wind moves through moving those birds up against the lake shore. Then a viewer might be privileged to see kettles of hawks circling over head and slowly peeling off to move further south. Why do these kettles as they are called form? Raptors generally don't like to fly great distances over water. They rely on thermal updrafts to help them rise and not as many thermals develop over water. Since the broad wings all migrate at about the same time which is a specie specific trait, there will be 100s of these birds in each thermal creating these circular formations of birds. Each individual bird rises to the top of the thermal and when the rising hot air cools and ceases to rise the bird peels off the top of the air column and glides, losing height until it finds the base of another rising air column. This formation resembles a kettle boiling over. Hence the name -- a kettle of hawks.

Morning from Madame's Boudoir

When I awake, the view out my bedroom window is of a pale anemic morning, like the fragile fainting daughter of the domineering English matron. Porcelain grays, cream and pale blues are the colors. There are no cloud distinctions save two small dark wisps above the horizon, but there is a slight blush on the sky's cheeks just beneath the indistinct globe of the sun. But that sun-- in spite of being weakened by the winter and the clouds before it's face -- has the strength to beat a path on the calm Lake Michigan surface. The horizon is marked by a powder blue line of water. Further south away from the sun's pale influence, the water is deeper blue and the sky blushes more visibly. Winter ghosts of trees stand witness to the subtle shifting light patterns. Suddenly, the visible globe of the sun disappears, its only remnant a long narrowing swath of bright cream light on the water just below the horizon, as though someone out there on the lake needs illumination. Momentarily white flakes begin to drift down from the graying sky and within seconds we are playing out the weather forecast -- lake-effect snow showers. The narrow band of sunlight on the lake narrows further and disappears. The indistinct clouds and blushing skies disappear and now the lake world is one gray color from water to sky. Only the trees maintain their distinct silhouette among the snow flakes, and the ground of the backyard is now trying to achieve that oneness with lake and sky by turning white with snow. All this has happened in exactly 12 minutes. Life on Lake Michigan.

Yes, we live on Lake Michigan and see this play of color and light everyday. What a special opportunity.