Friday, April 15

A beautiful summer-like day, highs may reach 85 degrees. Do something fun! Your tax money has provided it.

Wednesday, April 12

This wind and warmth will continue through the rest of the day, and happily the clouds will be moving out sometime around noon. I know that people keep talking about thunderstorms and rain this morning, however I don't see anything coming. But don't hate me if it sprinkles a bit before noon.

Tomorrow will be warm and cloudy, and Friday will be warm as well. I can't tell if there will be any rain, but neither can anyone else, so you can make up your own prediction if you want. A big storm system will be moving through sometime around Sunday, and that will definitely bring rain and lower the temperatures into the 50s for the beginning of next week.

Sunday, April 9

Sunny with a high in the mid to upper-50s today. The sun will feel very warm, but winter will seem to be hiding in the shade. Very low windspeeds will help to make the day pleasant.

Tomorrow then a great week of warm weather will begin. Expect highs in the upper 60s tomorrow, and then 70s for the next few days, with mostly sunny skies as well.

Friday, April 7

A cruddy day with dropping temperatures and rising windspeeds. Drizzly cold rain will be falling intermittently throughout the afternoon. Tomorrow the high will only reach the mid-40s, and the air will feel dry and wintry.

If you are like me and have just lost your job, you will stay inside watching movies and eating oatmeal. If you are not like me and are unfortunate enough to have a job, you should scowl and grumble, pull on your scarf, and try not to catch infections from your co-workers. However don't despair, next week will make everything better. There is a very good chance that the temperature will exceed 70 degrees sometime between Tuesday and Thursday.

Sunday, December 11

Temperatures will fall into the upper teens today as a cold front passes and the snow will start falling again in the early evening. Expect 1-2 more inches. Tomorrow it will warm up again, and then we will have another significant snow event around Tuesday or Wednesday.

Friday, December 9

Today will be clear and bright and cold with a high in the low 20s. Towards evening the wind will pick up and blow the snow around and sting your face. Tomorrow will be a few degrees warmer, but cloudy again...and there may be even more snow. I can't find an exact number (although I haven't looked very hard), but it looks as if 6-7 inches of snow fell in my neighborhood, and Midway reported 9.3". This is the snowiest early December since the infamous winter of '78, when my sister was born.

Friday, October 14

Sunny and pleasant with a high in the seventies.

Tuesday, October 12

Cool and grey.

Thursday Night

This warm front will head back up this way early tomorrow morning bringing thunderstorms and temperatures in the 70s. But as soon as it gets here it will decide to move along and drag a cold front with its own storms behind it in the evening. So be prepared for everything tomorrow. After that some boring colder (mid-50s) weather for a while, and then maybe some more stable warm air in the middle of the week.

Learning Corner : Ions

Dear Weather Goddess,

Could you please clear up a question for me? People are always talking about ions, and whether they are positive or negative.

Why should I care?
What do ions do?
Do they only change polarity during a good (or bad depending on whether you like them or not) thunderstorm?
Do animals freak out due to ion actions?

-Cat


As you may remember from high school science classes, ions are atoms that have lost or gained electrons and therefore carry a positive or negative charge. The earth's normal radiation creates positive ions in the air near its surface, while flowing or evaporating water will create negative ions in the air surrounding it. Why this is is beyond my powers to relate as the explanations are dense and boring and made me sleepy. So just trust me. When a thunderstorm comes along the air near the ground will become positively charged, while the bottom of the storm will become negatively charged. (Once again I can't really explain...) During the course of the storm the combined effects of lightning and rain will leave the air near the ground full of negatively charged ions.

Why should you care? Supposedly these negative ions are responsible for the happy, relaxed feelings we have after a thunderstorm, at the beach, or in the shower. It seems that there have been some real studies shown on this phenomenon that prove there is some truth to it, and seasonal affective disorder and other mild depressions may be partially attributable to positive ions.

As far as animals are concerned there are plenty of words on the web explaining their responses to positive ions before storms and especially before earthquakes. I didn't feel like plunging into that morass, but the answer may be out there if you feel like looking. You can also find quite a bit of speculation on the effects of ions on the stockmarket, crime, sports, politics, empires, dinosaurs etc.

If you are concerned about your positive ion exposure you can buy an expensive thing that shoots negative ions around your apartment, or you can just stop reading blogs, do the dishes and take a shower.

Wednesday Night

Okay, obviously, I was very very wrong. But luckily so was everyone else. So, no nice weather this week. There is this stupid front hanging out just south of us now, and the winds are blowing over the lake for the next day and a half, so we will have some cold blustery weather tomorrow, with a brief respite on Friday, and then some more crap over the weekend. The National Weather Service forecast is pretty dire for the next week, but Skilling is more optimistic, so I will go with him. Expect 40s tomorrow with high winds, then a brief period of warmth on Friday with a high in the upper 60s but dropping rapidly in the evening, then highs in the 50s for the next few days and another warming trend starting on Tuesday. (All of this will be accompanied by periodic rain and persistent cloudiness.)

Monday night, May 9th

My dear readers, I apologize for the long hiatus. I will give you two lame excuses: one, I was working very hard on my new website, conglomeratemap.org, and two, I then was simply lazy and tired for the last week and didn't want to look at the computer, but I think that might have something to do with the western edge of a high pressure system that was hanging out for so long, which always gets me depressed.

Now, happily, I have a wonderful forecast for everyone. Tomorrow will be nice and summery, with a high at or above 80. For the rest of the week we have what I consider to be ideal weather: highs near 80 and storms at night. So far nothing looks like it will be terribly severe, just a nice release at the end of the day.

Thursday Night

Hello everyone and sorry. I have been pretty sick, and also stressed from working on my conglomerate project. I promise a learning corner soon where I will spend time with all of your good questions about ions and wind and winter. But for now, a crappy forecast:

Crappy. Rainy and very windy, high in the upper 40s.

Friday

Another clear sunny day tomorrow, I wouldn't be surprised if the high reaches 70 as the winds continue to diminish. More of the same for the next few days, with each day getting warmer. Unfortunately these clear nights will be cold, so bring a jacket if you are going to be galavanting around after dark.

Wednesday

Cold, sunny and windy. High of 45. Everything will seem to require more energy than it should.

Will someone ask me a weather question?

Please? I'm bored.

Tuesday

Sorry, yesterday's forecast was kind of wrong. I just repeated what they told me, and what they told me looked right. Today will be rainy and cooler with a high in the 50s. After that it will be windy and sunny for a few days, and I think the next nice day will probably be Friday or Saturday.

Monday

Today will be a letdown after yesterday. Cloudy with a high around 60. We would have considered this warm a few weeks ago but it will feel slightly cold and we will worry about catching a cold. Tuesday will be rainy and chilly, but things should brighten up again on Wednesday afternoon, and the temperatures will rise as the weekend approaches.

Friday

Clear with a high in the low 50s. It will be nice in the sun, but the wind will be blowing around so you will find yourself shivering in the shade, especially on Milwaukee Ave.

Wednesday

***enhanced forecast*** With the help of Weather Pal Jon. "its gonna rain like god's dog is shaking itself..I dunno, i dunno... huh?" Okay, enough of that. Warm again tomorrow (upper 60s), but storms starting around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, but they won't be as good as last week, then the temperature will drop steadily into the 40s at night. Expect rain and highs in the 50s for the next few days.

Tuesday

Yes, it will be a great day. Please enjoy it while I am working. The storms won't come until Wednesday afternoon and it looks like they won't be as dramatic as last week's, but it is a bit early to tell.