A tad chilly

Life in the pool has been good for about a month and a half. Every day is near 90°F.

I haven't posted lately 'cause I almost feel guilty about sharing such nice conditions.

almost

Rains has finally got here.

      MASSIVE tonadoes hit northern Illinois.

It sounds like Fairdale's going to be a real mess once it gets light enough to look around. But at least there's only one known death (so far), and the news reports say they had an opportunity already to search through the rubble of every building for victims.

It's definitely the time of year for tornadoes. Tomorrow (April 11) is the 50th anniversary of the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak in the midwest in 1965. Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan were hit with 47 documented tornadoes that killed 271 people and injured more than 1500. This wasn't a case of one tornado that had an unfortunately high death total at one location. The scope was incredible. On that Palm Sunday 21 different tornadoes had fatalities, distribued across a wide area-- 6 states had fatalities in a total of 31 different counties. The 3 states with the most killed were Indiana (138 fatalities in 12 counties), Ohio (60 fatalities in 9 counties), and Michigan (53 fatalities in 7 counties).

There were also "Palm Sunday" tornado outbreaks in 1920 and 1994. Another outbreak occurred on Palm Sunday in 1936 (killed more than 450 people), but for some reason that outbreak never got the title of "Palm Sunday" like the others-- it's known as the Tupelo-Gainesville outbreak.

This Wikipedia photo is the famous "double" tornado from the 1965 outbreak. It is always identified as the tornado that destroyed the Midway Trailer park, but THIS ACCOUNT by a witness says that's not correct because the trailer park had already been destroyed by an earlier tornado. He says the only reason he and others were there to witness the double tornado in the first place was because they showed up to respond to the injured and dead from the earlier tornado.

Pretty cool-- here's a photo of Earth and moon taken by the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn.

OMG, they're different colours!

2398, and 99, both cool.

Yesterday it got up to 55 F here. I had my window down while driving around the Soo in the early afternoon (though it was only in the mid-40s then).

Do you ever plan on moving?

Depends on how my back is doing, but some days I can move all the way out to the mailbox and back.

How's the cost of living there?

Overall, cost of living is fairly low (3 years ago the cost-of-living index for this county was 82.1, with 100 defined as the national average). That might sound good, except the median income for the county is only 85% that of Michigan as a whole, and Michigan itself is only about 90% of the U.S. average income and falling (Michigan ranks 35th).

Average household incomes:
U.S. average = $50,502
Michigan = $45,981
Chippewa County, MI = $39,351 (per capita income = $19,334)

Local housing costs = low, but heating = high . I've seen values for the average total heating costs for the average U.S. house for a full winter that range from ~$600 to ~$950, but heating costs here can exceed $1000 a month for 4 or 5 months for some homes.

Food costs are higher than downstate. Gasoline is just under $2.50/gallon right now, peaked at ~$4.40 during the most recent butt reaming by the oil companies.

Damn!

As I mentioned, two days ago (Saturday), the temperature reached the 50 F mark (52 F, actually) in the Soo for the first time this year. And the very next day it reached the 60 F mark-- yesterday the Soo recorded 63 F . That's 15 degrees above the normal high of 48 F for April 12.

The last day that was 15 or more degrees warmer than normal was way back on September 28, when the temperature reached 80 F, a record high that was 19 degrees warmer than the normal high for that date.

So including yesterday, there have been only 2 days since (and including) September 28 that were 15 or more degrees above normal. During that same period there were 19 days that were 15 or more degrees below normal.

BTW, the last previous day that the Soo reached 60 F (and no higher on that day) was October 14. That's a span of 181 days below 60 F .

Long time.

   Ok then, going by your weather records, on what date are you statistically most likely to get the first day of snowfall later this year in your area?

  Are all the ships scampering freely about the lakes now?

That snafu I described 5 days ago has been uncorked, anyway, though there's still plenty of ice in the east end of Lake Superior and the St. Mary's system, as the chart from a few hours ago indicates. In fact, yesterday was the first day I saw any open water out front, and it was just a small region. During the several weeks of the thawing period the wind and currents can move the existing ice around a lot, creating jam-ups pretty fast where there was clear sailing (literally) just a few hours earlier.

I didn't read any further update on the Kaye E. Barker (the ship that got holed by the ice). The damage wasn't dangerous, but was severe enough to remove the ship from duty. The Barker was expected to transfer its load to another ship, get a temporary fix, and then head to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, for permanent repairs.

What a switch! When it got light within this past hour there was only 100 feet or so of ice extending out from the shore and the entire remainder of the 4-mile-wide channel is open water. That's just about exactly the opposite of the conditions yesterday.

The ice could come back in again just as fast as it left, but at least from this point forward any ice that appears will be loose and mobile.