[Thorzdad]

I’ve only been to Canada once. During high school, our class did a bird-watching trip to Point Pelee. It was pretty fun.

[andi*pandi]

Originally Posted by subego 

I’d love to visit urban Canada.

Right before high school I went canoeing in the wilderness(ish) for a week. Didn’t enjoy it much. Partially due to callowness, partially due to not being athletically up to the task.

The fresh northern pike was my favorite memory, but I was extremely hungry.

it seems like Toronto would not be far for you to visit. We had a lot of fun there. Ottawa was surprisingly nice (we focused on art). Montreal and Quebec are also great. Nova Scotia and PEI are not urban but lovely. (We have done a lot of driving in canada.)

[ghporter]

My wife and I have a fairly near-term plan for a big vacation. We live in San Antonio, Texas, but I grew up in Southeastern Michigan. There is SO MUCH absolutely cool stuff in Michigan that I want to show her. So we’re looking at an early summer trip to the Traverse City area (before it’s full of people there for the Cherry Festival), and the whole northwest corner of the Lower Peninsula. We also want to go to Toronto for a few days.

My wife’s first visit to Canada was to Windsor. Honestly, Windsor is a nice place, but it’s not going to “wow” someone with it’s “Canadian-ness”, especially since it’s a lot like the Michigan side of the border, but cleaner…and there are these maple leaves on all the signs… But going east through Ontario definitely shows off the province, and Toronto is, well, Toronto.

Anyway, on the weather scene, we’re headed to Galveston this weekend, and the weather is predicted to be in the 70s to 80s, with anywhere from 40%-60% chance of rain. Or thunderstorms. Or whatever. Considering our first trip there coincided with a smallish tropical storm washing through, we’re not too concerned. It’s just that this type of weather, while not exactly odd for Galveston, is not “in season,” so to speak. This sort of stuff is usually a February-March thing in my experience…

[Thorzdad]

I’ve needed repair work to my house’s exterior, which will entail removing the siding for a couple of days. The contractor hasn’t been able to start work because the weather forecast is such that we can’t confidently get two consecutive days with no rain or storms.

[ghporter]

“Damn, it’s hot. Details at 10”. And this is the beginning of June. Yesterday, San Antonio set a new record for high heat indices. 117F at 3 pm, topping the previous record of 116F, set just last year.

We’ve also had many days in a row where visibility was really poor, whether due to dust, humidity, or whatever. I was always led to believe that air was transparent, but that hasn’t been the case very much lately.

[andi*pandi]

Can I interest you in a blanket of pine pollen? Good thing my new car is green anyhow.

[ghporter]

No thanks, I wasn’t pleased with the crunchy yellow-green blanket most San Antonio (and Austin) cars sported earlier in the year thanks to the plentiful oaks here. Here’s a well written description of the issue from KUT.

Picture from the KUT article:

[andi*pandi]

my house has an oak. I am familiar with %^&*(v tree flowers.

[ghporter]

We have six or seven. There are about three or four different Oak species that are common throughout Central Texas, and they appear to take turns making us miserable. Until the Mountain Juniper (AKA Mountain Cedar) gets frisky.


When the Mountain Juniper starts spewing pollen, it’s quite common for large numbers of people here to become ill with flu-like symptoms. It ain’t the flu. It’s being overwhelmed by the massive amount of juniper pollen in the air.

[subego]

I didn’t look at the actual temp yesterday, but after sitting in the sun, my van’s temp sensor read 100°F. My guess is that was only 5° or so off.

The city closed 5 out of 6 cooling stations yesterday because of the holiday. Of course, libraries act as cooling stations… when they’re not all closed because it’s a holiday.

[andi*pandi]

To escape Boston's heat, I went to Georgia.
Record-breaking.

[Thorzdad]

Another weird stretch of weather here, where it's just cool enough to where the AC isn't going to come on unless you set it down to the high 60s, but the humidity is up around 96%, so everything is cold and sticky. Ugh.

[andi*pandi]

Norway was pleasant and mid 70s, everything I remember summer weather being like. Warm enough to jump in their surprisingly warm ocean but still chilly enough at night that layering on a flannel was nice.

Returning to Boston airport: ugh, oh yeah, humidity. Bleah.

[subego]

We had sudden Florida-like storms last night and this is how my block fared.

[ghporter]

Around here (South Texas) we’ve had a pretty long run of highs in the low 100s and lows into the upper 70s. Right now, we’re expecting a high of 100 and a low of 77; this is sort of a gradual decline from 105 and 85 not many days ago.

On the one hand, August is usually kind of extra hot, and temperatures usually start to drift downward in the last part of the month - but slowly enough that when mid-September rolls around with noticeably lower temperatures, it’s really nice. But the other hand holds a sheaf of records; the pattern is sort of similar to that of the last 40 or so years, but the numbers have been going up and up, and that’s been accelerating lately.

It really puts a damper on the outdoor stuff I like, such as hiking…. Dammit.

[subego]

This was right after a “feels like” 105° day.

To be fair, I’m also getting alerts from the suburb where I work.

[Jawbone54]

Have y'all been getting storms with higher winds in the past 1-2 years?

Within the past year, we've had at least 3 storms with winds in the 80 mph range, one which blew the top half of a pine tree onto our house. Not hurricane-related, BTW. I live in the NW corner of Louisiana, at least 4.5 hours north of the coast.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Jawbone54 

Have y'all been getting storms with higher winds in the past 1-2 years?

Originally Posted by subego 

We had sudden Florida-like storms last night and this is how my block fared.

No idea what you’re talking about.

Also… ahoy!

[subego]

[subego]

[Laminar]

Currently 80 degrees here. We have severe thunderstorms predicted for Wednesday from 1pm-11pm so the towns have already moved Beggar's Night from Wednesday to Thursday.

I remember growing up spending most nights trick or treating with my costume under my coat/snowpants.

[subego]

Got even warmer.

That storm is going to hit us at about 3a on Halloween morning, so it won’t interfere with festivities. Then low 50s to high 40s that evening, which is relatively warm for us. Looks to be extremely windy, which is the norm now but I don’t remember at all growing up.

[reader50]

Selective memory - it's the windy city after all. I bet you don't even remember that Metra commuter train explosion in 2011.

[subego]

It’s possible, but I feel I would have remembered it being this consistently bad. It’s like, blow adults around bad.



Love the hell out of that movie. I consider the final run to be one of the most satisfying scenes in cinema.

[reader50]

From what I read, it seems Chicago's winds are concentrated among the taller buildings. Inner city, I assume. Perhaps as a kid, you didn't frequent those areas, and were more in the suburbs?

[subego]

Was only in the suburbs for a couple years when I was in kindergarten. In more or less the same area of the city past that. Far enough outside downtown (and inland) that with only a few exceptions most buildings top out at four stories*.

There are also plenty of days with no wind at all. Just not Halloween for some reason of late.



*Some canny yet tasteless mid-century architect from around here designed the “4+1” to maximize density while staying inside zoning laws. They’re ugly boxes with four stories of apartments. The “plus one” floor is filled with infrastructure. Parking, garbage, mailboxes, office for the super, etc. I’ve been told this design squeezes through a loophole.

Here’s an example:

[subego]

I’m definitely not imagining it this year. The NWS just threw down with a wind advisory for Halloween.

[Laminar]

We lost a bucket on Tuesday due to wind. RIP watering bucket, you will be missed.

[Thorzdad]

Gonna be a light drizzle tonight for the trick-or-treaters. Ugh. I’ve done rainy halloweens as a kid. No fun.

True halloween story:
A couple of years ago, we, as good grandparents, went to our daughter’s family for halloween. The plan was for one of us to stay there to hand-out treats while the other a companied our daughter, son-in-law, and 3-year-old granddaughter on her first trick-or-treat in their neighborhood. I elected to stay and hand-out the candy. I set-up shop at a chair and table outside on their driveway.

So, I’m sitting there, actually enjoying the parade of costumes (it’s an upper-middle-class suburb) and these two young girls walk up. They couldn’t have been older than maybe freshmen in high school. Hell, maybe even 8th graders? Anyway...

The two of them walk up the driveway and, about halfway to me, one of them stops but the other one keeps walking toward me. The girl that stopped simply says something to the other one like “No. Come back.” and the other girl immediately turns and quietly walks back to the side of the first one. After a beat, the first girl says to the other one “Okay” and the second girl walks up to me, followed by the one giving the commands.

I hand both of them candy. As they turn to leave, I say to the first girl “Training a sub is hard work.” The girl doesn’t skip a beat and says back to me “I know, right?” and they trot off, the second girl obediently at the first girl’s side.

Simultaneously blew my mind and made me smile and giggle.

[subego]

It was 60° a few days ago.

[Laminar]

We had flurries but nothing actually stuck. Snow tires this weekend.

[subego]

We had an inch or two, but all gone now.

[Thorzdad]

We had a day where it was snowing and blowing hard, but the ambient temp bobbled around the freezing mark to where the defrost cycle on our heatpump wasn’t kicking-in regularly, to melt-off all the frozen snow and ice forming on it. That seems to have become a regular thing early in the season here.

[ghporter]

Our forecast for this week calls for yo-yo temperatures…. Multiple fronts sweeping through, with highs in the 80s Wednesday, then in the 60s the rest of the week, but the lows go back and forth between the 40s and 50s. Earlier, there were predictions of “high 84, low 59, then high 63, low 45, then high 82, low 58…” What they’re predicting now is less extreme, but still goofy as all get out (that’s Texan for “AF”).

[Thorzdad]

We’re going out this Saturday night for our anniversary, and the temps are forecast to be in the low-to-mid 20s. Brrrrrrrrr.