Stormy Weather

It is looking ominous out our way too. I have filled the bath with water just in case dear Hydro collapses.

On the Quebec coast, we've had cold, wet weather for over a month. Enough, already.

Oh, I agree - I can't tolerate really hot weather. But, all we're getting here is the cold and the rain. We need the sun for our gardens, which in many cases here, are dying. And, this weather, here, is causing a population explosion with blackflies. Many of us just stay indoors all day rather than confront the little buggers. [img]frown.gif" border="0[/img]

We had a fair to middlin' thunderstorm on Monday. It chased Snarfy the Wondergirl and I from Springbank park here in London. Too hot to have fun anyway.

When the cold front came through yesterday morning, there was no rain with it. We visited my niece west of London, out in the country south of Appin, just east of Glencoe.

The earth is baked there, no moisture in it at all. A walk through a rather magnificent example of Carolinian woods across the road from my nieces place showed dry cracked soil that should have been, if not full of standing water, at least muddy. Bad year if you like mosquitoes.

I treated the kids to a bunch of raspberries we found, but the berries were small and shrivelled.

Even milkweed in the soybean fields were stressed.(hmm. come to think, that may be as much due to "roundup" as it was lack of rain)

I'm not mentioning my nephew, because he was busy going to get 550 gallons of water to fill the basement cistern.

I'm used to keeping an eye on the sky, or in some cases, the weather radars when it's very hot and humid like it was at the start of the week, particularly if a cold front is coming through.

Years ago, we had a microburst take down trees and cause other damage in the neighborhood, and it taught me to have some respect for this kind of weather.

But when it cools off like it did the past couple of days, I don't watch. Typically, the cool winds out of the north east or north west (most often north west) blow over Georgian Bay or Lake Huron, and while the day starts clear as a bell, cotton puff clouds start to assemble, and by afternoon sometimes they crowd together.

It's excellent weather, actually, my favorite.

But late yesterday afternoon, a large cumulous cloud covered north London, and you could see tattered shards of dark grey cloud trying to move downward, and wierd patterns in the underside of the main cloud.

It looked tornadic, to me, in weather that wouldn't have me suspect that kind of activity.

I guess the air was cold not that far up in the atmosphere. In hot and humid weather, clouds have to get above 40,000 feet or more before they start hitting really cold air.

This is why I like the "Intelicast" Lansing Michigan radar. They show our area, and show the hieght of cloud tops, their direction and speed, and if hail or rotation has been detected.