Tag Archives: weather

Organic Obstacle Course

It’s spring in mid Michigan. Today it rained since before I awoke to the evening news broadcast. We got about 1.5 cm (half inch and a skosh more) of rain, a steady light rain most of the day with a few stronger showers early in the day. Much needed both to wet the ground and to flush some of the tree pollen from the air.

I went to town to pickup a library card and to participate in the local election event at the fire station. On the way home, I noticed a certain sign of the end of the winter season, the beginning of the Olympic organic obstacle course from the parking lot to the apartment building.  There is a concrete walkway consisting of segments about a meter long and the same distance wide (it was poured in one piece, but there are “lines” sunk into the surface to help prevent buckling and should a break occur it will me more likely to split along the lines). As I left my car early in the afternoon (about 5-7 hours after the rains began) I noticed the earthworms had left the safety of the grass and were migrating down and across the walk. Lots of worms, each square had at least 2 and there were a couple with more than 25 squirming creatures slithering along the rough top surface.

Now let it be said that I am not a particularly cruel person. I don’t take pleasure from needlessly ending the lives of lesser creatures in the great chain of existence. I am not a master student of zen where I avoid harming any and every living creature (do these more zealous adherents eat yoghurt?) and I am not a maniacal slaughterer of any and everything that moves, crossing either line on the road to hit any and all targets within range. For the most part, I hold a middle of the path point of view. I like spiders but discourage them from living within the center of my space (corners and unused areas are fine). Now that I no longer deliver propane I have become more tolerant of wasp and hornet nests (at one time I carried nerve agents to take the battle successfully against these monsters). I allow anthills to rise unmolested in the cracks of the local sidewalks (when I would walk my son to the bus stop, it was a daily competition to see who would wipe current building progress off the face of the Earth… it never seemed to have any effect as the next day the course was rebuilt for that day’s event.)

I simply don’t like walking on worms. I don’t have an excessive love for these builders of healthy soil, having sent many generations of them to a watery grave to feed the fishes. (Occasionally a fish would mistakenly BITE the worm and come home for lunch, but that was a rare event.) With my disability, I try to avoid sticking my cane tip into anything nasty that will follow me home onto the fluffy carpet I walk on barefoot. Tips, actually, as I have a quad-footed cane that will stand in the corner unattended (but has 4 times the opportunity to squish crud into the floor), so it is more of a challenge to find wormless sidewalk in the rain. Coupled with my limited mobility, and I deserve at least bronze in the trip to and from the car. Silver when I carry bags from the store (or library, hint hint).

Much as I find snow a distraction, at least it discourages insect infestation. Ladybugs are fine, box elder bugs are neutral (but very annoying), but some of what’s out there is just nasty. One year when I participated in the Chesanning Showboat Choir, a show of local and national talent that performed on a faux paddle-style riverboat (the paddles were fake, the river and boat very real), the mayfly hatch was worse than usual. There were so many of the 1-3 inch bugs flying around that night the stagehands had to sweep the stage between acts to keep the performers from falling down. Street lights on the drive home attracted so many bugs the effective visibility was down to a couple dozen feet. The road got slippery from dead bugs.

Then there’s the “June bugs” coming later this month. They are a kind of beetle that spends the first part of it’s life as a white grub that destroys lawns before morphing into brown, crunchy flying irritants. They are attracted to area lights, so they will accumulate on the screens of outside doors open to allow cool breezes to come indoors on warm evenings. They have tiny claws on their feet, so if (when) they fly and land on your clothing (hair) you can’t easily brush them off. Add the fact they just look creepy and click and buzz when flying around the porch lights, I get the shudders just thinking about them.

Most of the year, I like living here. Summer brings micro pets (I habitually give back rubs to any mosquito that comes by) and brilliant sunny days (vinegar was mom’s go to for dealing with sunburn). Thunderstorms bring natural firework displays (and intermittent power outages). Temp and humidity will often be 90-90 during the dog days of summer (and will bite you in the [REDACTED] if your air conditioning goes out). All in all, spring in Michigan is just about perfect, Except when it’s not…

Gold medal for living here awarded after successfully keeping worms on the sidewalk!

Phred

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Today’s Forecast: There Is A 100% Chance Of Weather

It is the third week of April in mid-Michigan and we are being “blessed” with congealed precipitation this morning. Making my way to my car to commute to the bi-weekly writing session with John, I noticed there were small chunks of icy crud on the wiper blades and in a crevice at the edge of the windshield. The sky was about half overcast and half deep blue, deceptive in it’s partially jovial appearance. Clear areas were breathtakingly beautiful, hinting at the delight of sunshine and short sleeved outerwear. The cloud covered segments of the sky were ominous, dreadfully reminiscent of the darkness of November, falling leaves guiding temperatures down to the cold, barren ground. Starting the car it was not apparent which segment of the sky would prevail.

Two hours have passed, It is time to declare the winner: ick. Either I overslept last night by about seven and a half months, or daylight saving time has expanded to move the clocks by seasons rather than hours. The sky is a mottled grey, darker where the daemons of despair have determined to drop daggers of dismay. Doh!

Somewhere there is a climatologist that will claim the late spring snow is a direct result of man-made global warming. Right…. Listening to the NOAA weather radio while in the shower, I could possibly accept some correlation for the lower than normal precipitation for the year (we are about 2.5 inches below the “average” for this year) but our local area is apparently not any warmer than usual. The accumulation of Cooling Degree Days (a measure of when the daily average temperature exceeds 65 degrees Fahrenheit) from the daily broadcast suggests we are 1 unit below the normal for this date. So we are actually cooler than “normal” this year.

The local TV stations compete for my attention when it comes to the weather forecast. There are two to choose from (there are about 6 local stations, but for some reason most of them piggyback on the two main reports), channel 6 and channel 10. Each has a staff including a senior forecaster and others to provide additional faces for the remainder of the broadcast day. Both stations claim to have the latest in Doppler radar and fancy doohickeys to help them provide the “most accurate forecast” ever. They are always similar, but hardly ever identical.

We have a weather station at the airport that reports to the national weather service. I can go to the National Weather Service web site and (in theory) get the same information available to the pros. There is radar, satellite images, hourly and daily forecast discussions and charts, and more data to download than I have storage space to hold.

So, if we are all playing with the same cards, why is there a difference in the information provided? One station might show the expected low tonight to be a couple of degrees warmer that the competitor while the other gives a slightly greater precipitation chance. Even the “current” temperature is often different. If they are using their local station sensors for the numbers a difference would be understandable (the stations are a couple of miles apart). But, when they show the values for around the state, they should both be showing the same data from the same sites, so they should match.

I have been to the airport in Charlotte (a small village south of Lansing and not the similar location several states away) and know exactly where the NWS station is collecting the data. So they should show the temp at the airport and it should match. Usually it does, but occasionally not.

Perhaps the weavers of the modern fiction that is the news broadcast really DO participate in the global conspiracy of spin, to present information filtered through the demands of the shadow government so we see the world as it is supposed to be rather than how it actually is. If this voice suddenly disappears you will understand why.

Newspeak declares rain to be white and crystalline in structure during certain months of the year. Welcome to Spring in [REDACTED].

Phred

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