A tad chilly

Sheesh, what a bumper crop of jerks at Yellowstone so far this year. And there's a lot of time to go-- peak tourist season hasn't arrived yet. So far we've got:

• the moron who fell into a hot spring Tuesday after leaving the designated walkways (he was more than a tenth of a mile from the walkway). The Park Service reported "there were no remains left to recover". Of course not-- the hot spring isn't even primate soup now-- just primate broth.
• the two imbeciles last month who kidnapped the newborn bison and shoved it into their SUV because it looked cold. The bison was euthanized after the herd wouldn't accept it back.
• the three Canadian flapheads who videoed themselves stomping around on the crystal formations at Grand Prismatic Spring
• the cretinous woman who got charged by an elk after she walked toward it, even as a guide was warning her not to, so she could take a better photograph (she tripped and went down while she was running away but the elk stopped its charge before trampling her)
• the 13-year old who was burned on his foot and lower leg in a hot pool at the Upper Geyser Basin. I didn't use an intelligence-related adjective for him because he wasn't the numbskull in that incident. For some reason his father had been carrying him next to the pool and slipped, dropping him in. Who carries around a 13-year-old? Especially off the allowed paths?

And of course there are the usual incidents of people who got away with whatever stupid thing they did-- the woman who had herself photgraphed while she petted the bison, the photo (taken with a long lens) of a woman up nice and close to the female bear with cubs so she could get a good picture, etc.

Yellowstone-- so many opportunities for Darwin awards!

Here's a current shot of a stringy squall line headed my way. Looks like BP should get some fun too, though quite a bit later than we get it in the EUP.

The Gaylord NWS posted this pic of a roll cloud over Lake Michigan last evening:

 Great picture!

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I haven't gone swimming in Lake Superior or the St. Mary's River in several decades! But I did as a kid. No gators or snakes-- it's too cold for any sort of reptile to be happy in that water. The only thing that might qualify as "dangerous" would be lampreys, which aren't known for attacking and latching onto humans though there are occasional stories here and there.

Most of the critter hazards here are on the land, like bears and other things with pointy teeth. The worst hazards are the smallest-- black flies can leave you completely bloodied and swollen, and the mosquitoes and ticks can carry some nasty microbes that can ruin your life (and those of your pets).

Rip currents can be a real problem on the Lake Michigan shore of the northern lower peninsula. Quite a few times a year the weather service issues rip current warnings for the area. There can be nasty currents on any of the lakes, but that region seems especially prone.

EDIT: here's a rip current on the Michigan shore of Lake Michigan, down near the southern end of the lake.

   A little out of your neighborhood, CP, but maybe you recognize it?

A math question here: why use the "14th/86th percentiles" ? I understand the quartiles (25th/75th) etc.

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With a little bit of research, I think you are right about this.

I dunno . . . for a normal distribution, the first and second standard deviation percentiles are about 68% and 95%. Neither is very close to 86 . . .

Ah . . . got it! 14 is about 1/7th of 100.  Instead of giving their likelihoods for weather values as percentages or percentiles the way the rest of the world would, the Aussies express it as "days of the week". 14 percentile and 86 percentile correspond to 1 day out of a week and 6 days out of a week.  So if you give the 14th percentile historic temperature, you're saying statistically you'd expect only 1 day a week to be below that temperature, or 6 days a week to be above that temperature. Opposite for the 86 percentile value.

I found it on an Aussie hiking forum-- one Aussie was explaining it to another.

Knowing that now, the answer was right in the original chart kco provided. Notice that they refer to those data as the "per week" values.

Joseph-S-- I got tied up with the "per week" stuff and forgot to reply to your post! I was going to write that I recognized the Gaspe peninsula at the mouth of the seaway. There's a great national park (Forillon National Park) at the tip of the Gaspe, but it has sort of an ugly history. It was created in 1970 when the Canadian Government asked the Quebec Government to expropriate the homes of more than 200 families to clear the way for the park, and the Quebec Government farmed out the task to a private firm that threatened the families into accepting less for their properties than they should have gotten. 5 years ago (40+ years after it happened) the House of Commons issued an apology to the uprooted residents. Bet that made everyone feel better!

They say it's going to get pretty hot here...

 Interesting, CP, and yet so pitiful that history is filled with these types of shenanigans.