I had big plans for today. I was going to make a day trip to do some spider collecting — today is my wife’s day off, so it was a good time to take the car away. I had it all planned out: the route, I’d identified some parks and likely places to stop, and the trip was going to end at a museum I’ve never visited before, an hour away. We’ve had a week of sunny, warm weather (we hit 91°F yesterday!) so I thought there’d be a good chance some spiders would have emerged.
Then Minnesota weather got in the way. I woke up to a massive thunderclap, and the forecast is for thunderstorms and strong winds. Forget about spidering today.
I think instead I get to go into the lab and scrub fly bottles all afternoon. Gotta get the fly lab cleaned up.
This will not be fun.
Mary was not enthused about the trip anyway. She’s in gardening mode.
Send your rain south. We (Cedar Falls, IA) haven’t had any rain in almost a month.
You’re getting rain?! Plus normal local weather!? Lucky, lucky you! This Monty Python Life o’Brian scene springs to mind. (3 mins long.)
My local weather – changing climate due to Global Overheating – is still in its worst ever drought.* Usually here it rains after Anzac Day (25th April) and Winter officially starts in June. A few weeks time. Autumns done – pretty much. But not been Autumn really.
But everything is still so dry and yellow. Bushfire season extended. There is smoke in the air – from woodfires of people with those but yet that scares me every time I smell it because of the bushfire hazard here. The unprecedented bushfires of Scummo’s era. The lingering, endless, incalculable damage of that denialism and inaction and its on-going consequences. Just before our Winter when usually we’d have rain. It is not an El Nino year even. Creeks and dams are still dry. Bare riverbeds with stones and sand and out beyond what should be beneath seasonally running water are seedlings and weeds sprouting and dying far beyond what used to be the water-marks. Playford Lake is the driest I’ve ever seen still and I’ve been living here since 1985. In Belair NP there’s a hillside topped with a line of yellow. Dead Stringybarks :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringybark
Specifically, Eucalyptus obliqua / baxteri that have gown there for decades, centuries, but have not survived this. Trees that have lived long enough to develop hollows (80 + years) to give possums, antechinus so many species of birds and so much more homes. Slow growing, long lived, multi-stemmed blocks of lats for fauna. Dead. Decaying. Gone.
Rain? Please, please rain! Send us some.. if only you could.
The bush is drying and dying without it.
It is heart-breaking.
.* See :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-08/southern-australias-heat-and-drought-explained/105264074
Scrubbing fly bottles
Man, you know how to show yourself a good time!
Most of Sweden has a very low water table right now. We are in one of the most stable temperate climate zones and we have had very little precipitation for months. Bring on the thunderstorms!
Tornado spotted near Morris. We are hunkered down.
StevoR@1
Meanwhile here in Canada there are evacuations already in Manitoba as fire season gets rolling. It is becoming impossible to send crews, water bombers down under during the offseason as Canadian and Australian fire seasons overlap. Never mind the water bombers that are needed in California before the start of our fire season.
@5 PZ The SPC map looked like the Slight and Enhanced areas were more east of you earlier.
We had a couple days of nasty cells last week. More hail core type stuff than twisties.
Hopefully Reed Timmer is not driving through your area. He was in MN a few weeks ago. Stay safe!
Looks like higher Moderate level stuff will be much further SE of you tomorrow (MO, KY, IN, and TN).
Yeah, it missed us, slid by a few miles to our east, and dumped a brief torrent of rain on us, and a bit of hail.
Evidently your storm system is headed toward the Chicago area. Tornado watch in effect for a couple of hours.
Maybe we can use nukes to nudge the rain clouds to the right places? Ask Trump.