As I write this at 5:30am the temperature is a warm 69° with a cold front getting ready to move through. We had no rain overnight and there is currently nothing on radar as the forecasted instability has left the state.
I spent yesterday tearing out an old sidewalk next to the house and laying new pavers. It was hot work and I am paying for it today with the aches and pains of an old body revolting against hard work. When I was a younger man I worked in construction building commercial buildings, mostly cement work laying foundations and pouring walls. I could do that all day, day after day with no ill affects in 80°+ heat. It helped that when I was in high school I worked on various farms building muscle and endurance working 10 to 14 hour days outside in the heat. Not many kids do that today. In our community most of the boys would work a rotation on the area farms baling hay, when the hay and straw was done, mucking out barns was another opportunity to make money. In the early 70s making a buck an hour was a big deal and we would get paid in cash at the end of the week. I would generally make $60 a week which was good money for a teenager back then. We would go to the area feed mill in the morning as the farmers would pull up in their trucks to pick up those willing to work on the farms. We didn’t have Walmart’s, Burger Kings and MacDonald’s back then.
My wife and I were reminiscing about our school days when we had dress codes. home economic classes for the girls and wood and auto shop for the guys. I took wood shop and drafting classes – drafting was still done on a drafting board – we didn’t have calculators or computers back then. I look back at my grandfathers life when the first cars were appearing and farm work was done with huge draft horses. Farmers were self sufficient back then growing and raising their own food with enough left over to sell to buy the things they needed. In all of his 82 years he never went out on credit with the bank – he paid cash for everything, even his trucks and tractors. When I was a kid he still had an outhouse and hand pump for water. They didn’t have indoor plumbing until 1963. We have come a long ways in the past 100 years and I wonder if a lot of it is for the best.
Our temps will continue to drop this morning leveling out into the low to mid 60s. We should see some sun today so it will be a good day to get some yard work done. It is almost time to think about putting the lawn mowers away. I am hoping to cut the grass a couple more times before parking the lawn tractor for the year. My first lawn mower was a rotary mower which took effort to push to make the blades spin. I have graduated to a John Deere lawn tractor and yes, I paid cash for it as I do for most purchases as did my grandfather (with the exception of the house and cars). My first new car cost $1600 in 1974.
We could see some frost northeast of Grand Rapids tonight with southwest Michigan dropping to around 40°. Friday on through the weekend will bring more rain into the area with cool temps in the 60s. Next Monday through Wednesday we will see our temps rise in the 70s to near 80° again as rain chances continue. I am still not seeing our first frost in SW Michigan until mid-month.
I am in agreement with Bill Steffen in regards to this winter. He says a hot summer doesn’t always mean we will see a warm winter – he has mentioned this several times. Neither of us will be putting out a winter forecast until early November. Cold air will come, that is a given….
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So we all agree it was a hot 5 months that we came through, well everyone but one or two, so I thought I would do some leg work on some stats. Slim, I’m not trying to take your job, this is a one time thing. For my own curiosity, and the constant posts of “below normal” and “above normal”, I wanted to know the hard numbers of our hot stretch from May through September. Specifically, how many days were above normal, how many below. Here are the totals I came up with:
From May 1 till September 30, 153 days, we had 101 above average days, 49 below average, and 3 exactly at average. More than double the number for above average, including 20+ day streaks. Broken down by month:
May – 25 above, 6 below
June – 16 above, 14 below
July – 16 above, 12 below, 3 even
August – 26 above, 5 below
September – 18 above, 12 below
No matter how you feel about it, that’s an impressive run! I still wish they kept records for dew points, because I believe this year would be one of the top years, at least in my lifetime. Looking back on Summers I remember, 1988 was memorable for all the 90 degree days, 2012 was just ridiculously hot, and now 2018 will be recalled years from now, both for the # of above average days, and the humidity.
And as for October, 4 days in now and 3 above, 1 below. Looking at the forecast for next week, this long trend looks to continue.
Barry, I agree that it would be nice if the NWS would keep records of the DP’s. As for life time warmest summer months. Using CDD here is a list of my warmest warm season months. May warmest 1991 155. 2018 5th place 108. June warmest 2005 258 CDD 2018 23rd place with 168. July 2012 warmest in my life time 449 2018 11th place with 168. August 1959 335 2018 8th place 274 CDD. And September warmest 1961 with 152 2018 3 warmest with 135. This is just in my lifetime.
For comparisons here are the number if above/below average days in the above warmest months
May 1991 21 above 10 below 0 at average
June 2005 23 above 7 below and 0 at average
July 2012 30 above 1 below and 0 at average
August 1959 23 above 8 below and 0 at average
September 1961 21 above 9 below and 0 at average’
So in the number of days warmer than average May and August of 2018 had the most in my life time. Not sure how this stacks up in GR recorded history.
Slim
Thanks Slim! I could read numbers like that all day!
Interesting! It sure felt like a very warm, muggy summer. I remember seeing dewpoints in the mid-to-high 70’s; something more common to Florida than Michigan. I also paid a dear price for that heat/humidity: I was mowing the lawn out behind work one hot August day – a nice 1/2-acre field – when a wind gust blew the clippings of the poison ivy I was mowing over, back on top of me in my shorts and tank-top. Ugh. Poison Ivy rash is bad enough, let alone when it’s really hot….
But that’s cleared up, and today is spectacular! I’m just afraid that with all the warmth and rain, we aren’t going to see a very colorful Fall this year?
The leaves are still very green around Gran Rapids compared areas to our east. There is some color in eastern Michigan, and spotty color in southern Ontario, Fair color in western NY with better color around the hills of eastern NY
Slim
Get ready for lows in the 30’s tonight! Incredible!
Get ready for highs in the 80’s again next week!! Who knew?!?!
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The high temp of G.R. today was 80 degrees. What’s impressive is that it was around 3 a.m.! Don’t get middle of the night temps that high very often.
I drove from Cooperstown NY to GR yesterday, The temperatures were in the upper 50’s until we got to far western NY (10 AM until 12 noon) when they reached the low to mid 60’s (noon until 2PM) temps stayed in the mid 60’s(4PM until 530 PM) across the part of Canada we went thru. Crossed the boarder at Port Huron there the temp was 72(had dinner in PH) reached 77 at Lansing (around 8:30) and Was 81 here at GR (about 10PM)
Slim
Temp has dropped 16 degrees since midnight – it is now 62….
Very nice refreshing air outside this morning way better then yesterday the winds are sure putting the leafs down it’s about time to start raking tomorrow looks wonderful and I’m for Friday night football cool with spotty showers last nights storms fell apart over GR we did not even get a drop of rain out at thee YARDofBRICKS!! Have a great Thursday INDYDOG14!!
We are back from out road trip to Cooperstown NY. My impression of the Baseball Hall of Fame is mixed. The museum is nice and there are a lot of baseball artifacts there. The town of Cooperstown is not very big and most things there are somewhat expensive as there is not much food choices there. The crowds were very small this time of the year but that is not the case in the summer time. So parking is not the best at that time of year. I will go into more detail on a Saturday past later on.
Slim