Sunset at Hall Lake

The biggest weather news lately has been the heat wave that continues to brutalize the central and eastern United States. Thankfully, these last two days have been easier to take here in Michigan. Friday evening a weak cold front passed through and dropped the dewpoints down into the livable mid-60s for a short while, and since then, variable cloudiness has helped to modify the temperatures.

Yesterday we were in a slight risk area, but with a warm front laying along the Indiana border, the southern tier counties are where convection broke out in Southwest Michigan. One cell near Cassopolis showed sustained, deep rotation on the radar, and Kurt Hulst and I discussed going after it. Given the distance and marginal conditions, we decided to let it go.

Instead, I headed out the door later on with my saxophone and my fishing rod, as well as my camera and laptop just in case storms developed within easy range. Not that I expected any, and none materialzed to divert me from casting a line into the water for the first time in a couple of years.

It felt good to get back at fishing, and picturesque Hall Lake in Yankee Springs Recreational Area was the perfect place to do so. Forty-two acres in size and sporting a small island in its middle, Hall Lake attracts just a handful of fishermen, to whom it offers a tranquil option to the much larger, all-sports Gun Lake to its west. Tucked in a wooded valley, where it is bordered to the south by Gun Lake Road and cradled by the glacial hills of Barry County, it is a place where a man can go to withdraw from the madly rushing world, stand at the water’s edge casting topwater lures into the evening, and let his thoughts slow down to a casual stroll.

I’m no great fisherman. What I do with a rod and reel is more accurately described as dredging. But the fish were eager feeders yesterday, and it took only a few casts before I landed a nice little 12-inch bass–big enough to keep, but I released him. I viewed it as my Father smiling at me for getting back to a hobby that I’ve never mastered but always enjoyed.

More casts netted me nothing, and presently my interest shifted to the sky. The sun had slipped below the treeline, and a flock of fractocumulus passing overhead articulated the twilight. No fiery sunset, this, no Van Gogh sky; just a gently fading afterglow filled with nuance and calm emotion, silhouetting the forested shoreline and glimmering, spirit-like, in the quiescent mirror of the lake.

It was a scene worth capturing with my camera, and I have done so. Click on the images to enlarge them. I like them, and I hope you will too.

Grasshopper Passion Revisited

Editing away with beaverish industriousness on a video interview I hope to post soon on this blog, I haven’t had time to mess with much of anything else. So heck, why not dig into my several years of archives and … why, here’s something right here that ought to grab your fancy. Yes, and shame on you, advance shame, for soiling your mind with such sordid, XXX-rated fare!

That’s right: Gleaned from the days of Stormhorn.com’s former, raw crudity, here is a post calculated to quicken your pulse with a GRAPHIC PHOTO OF NAKED BODIES JOINED IN FRENZIED PLEASURE!!!

Or not-so-frenzied. Actually, we could probably dispense with the triple exclamation marks and the all capitals. Let your own conscience be the judge is you read about …

Grasshopper Passion.

Here Comes the Summer Pattern

Sumer is icumen in,
Loudly sing, cuckoo!
Grows the seed and blows the mead,
And springs the wood anew;
Sing, cuckoo!
Ewe bleats harshly after lamb,
Cows after calves make moo;
Bullock stamps and deer champs,
Now shrilly sing, cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo
Wild bird are you;
Be never still, cuckoo!

Right. It looks like we’re about to have our hands full, what with bleating ewes, cows making moo, and so on. There are, however, some things that the old folk song fails to mention. The polar jet lifting north, for instance. Weakening mid-level winds. Temperatures at 700 mb heating up, with the 12 degree centigrade threshold expanding across the southern and central plains and ushering in the era of capping. I don’t know why the ancient songwriter didn’t address these matters. They’re as much a part of sumer–that is to say, summer–as stamping bullocks.

Here in Caledonia, yesterday was hot and today promises to be even hotter, around 95 degrees, before a cold front blows through tonight and brings relief. After that, we look to be in for a bout of unsettled weather. I’ll take it, even though it may inconvenience at least one outdoor gig I’ll be playing this weekend.

The summer weather pattern is on the way, putting the damper on storm chasing in the southern and central plains. Considering how devastatingly active this spring has been, that’s probably a good thing. I doubt that the people in towns such as Joplin, Missouri, will lament this season’s passing. As for those who chased storms in Dixie Alley and the southern plains–and there were more chasers than ever this year–you certainly got your fill of action, and some of you saw far more than you cared to. There are some amazing stories that have come out of the storm chasing community, and my hat is off to those of you who stepped in to help in tornado-stricken areas.

This was the worst of all seasons to be sidelined due to financial constraints, but that’s how it has been with me and with others who have taken a hit in the pocketbook from this rotten economy. I’m frankly happy to see the crest of storm season 2011 passing; I much prefer to occupy my mind with more productive thoughts than fretting over what I’m missing.

In any event, the playground is shifting northward. It’s not there quite yet, but it’s on the way. Troughs that had been digging deep into the southern plains are now beginning to ripple across the northern tier and Canada, and lately, mesoscale convective systems have been cropping up regularly in the SPC discussions. Those are the specialty of the state where I live.

If there’s any advantage to living in the Great Lakes, it’s that we’re close enough to the summer jet stream that it can still dip down out of Canada into our neck of the woods. And while northwest flow isn’t exactly your classic chase scenario, it can deliver some occasional surprises. Illinois in particular has gotten some whopping summer tornadoes–and for those of you who don’t chase east of the Mississippi, I don’t mind telling you that central and northern Illinois is fabulous chase territory. Also, closer to home, even garden variety arcus clouds are sublime to watch sweeping in at the Lake Michigan shoreline.

For better or worse, sumer is icumen in and storm season is winding down. Most people aren’t sorry for the change. But most people don’t view storms the way that storm chasers do. I guess we’re a bit cuckoo.

Low-Topped Supercell Images from Last Wednesday

Last Wednesday, May 11, in northwest Kansas was a bust chase as far as tornadoes were concerned. But the prairie sky offers compensations that are blue-ribbon prizes in their own right if you’ve got an eye for beauty.

Here are some shots of a couple of low-topped supercells taken in the Atwood/Oberlin area. These storms dumped some marble-sized hail and exhibited visible, though not strong, rotation. They were lovely to behold, sculptures of moisture shaped by the wind and lit by the light of the waning evening. Atmospheric dramas such as these are the true panorama of the Great Plains. Like a run-on sentence, the treeless landscape stretches off into limitless sameness, leaving the sky to provide punctuation, energy, and color.

March: When Daylight Lengthens

Today is March 6, and between the first day of the month till now we have already gained fourteen minutes of daylight here in Caledonia, Michigan. By the end of the month, that figure will have grown to an hour and 29 minutes–52 minutes in the morning and 37 in the evening. That averages out to a gain of around 2.9 minutes every day.

March is the month when daylight happens.

Small wonder that storm chasers do a happy dance when March 1 arrives. It’s designated the beginning of meteorological spring for good reason. Henceforth the days are poised to lengthen rapidly. The sun is climbing higher in its arc over the northern hemisphere, putting in a longer workday and shining more intensely. That means warmer temperatures, juicier dewpoints, and increasing instability. Things start happening. The new storm season’s convective pump is getting primed, and preludes of the next few months start showing up on the radar.

So why complain about March? It may not be pretty, but it loves ya.

Skunk Cabbage Time

Snow may still be covering the ground here in West Michigan, but meteorological spring has sprung and March is on the march. Temperatures are trending warmer, and while the mid to upper thirties may not be anything to brag about, the vernal transition is at hand. You can see it in the mist lying over the snowfields. You can hear it in the spring songs of a few optimistic early-birds. It’s there on the weather maps in the form of lows sweeping northeastward out of the Plains, tugging moisture up out of the Gulf of Mexico. And soon, those of us who love native plants will discover it poking up through remnant drifts in wooded swamps in the form of Michigan’s earliest wildflower, the skunk cabbage.

Symplocarpus foetidus may not be bouquet material, but I’m fond of it. Too low-key to be striking, skunk cabbage is nevertheless remarkable, a demonstration of genius walking hand in hand with humility. Its small, odd-looking, purple-cowled flowers, rising amid the languishing snow drifts in mid to late March here in the north, resemble nothing else the woodland has to offer. Once I see them, I know that spring has gotten truly, irrevocably underway. (Click to enlarge image.)

Indeed, as spring’s first flowering harbinger, skunk cabbage makes its own modest contribution to the ambient temperature through its unique ability to generate heat. Skunk cabbage flowers literally melt their way through the snow, generating temperatures upwards of 70 degrees in their immediate vicinity. These little heat engines serve as microclimates for certain insects; each bloom is, in a sense, a world unto itself.

Speaking of the blooms, the mottled hood that resembles a monk emerging headfirst from the earth is not the actual flower. It is a structure called a spathe, and it wraps around the stubby yellow spike on which the tiny flowers grow.

Tear off just a small piece from any part of the plant–the spathe or, in a few more weeks, the large, lush green leaves–and give it a sniff. You’ll instantly discover how the skunk cabbage got its name. It’s not a plant known for its mild, winsome aroma.

The lowly skunk cabbage may rank as America’s oldest flowering herb. Speculation is that, in a supportive environment, Symplocarpus foetidus may live for hundreds of years. That stand of skunk cabbage you traipsed past without giving a second thought to on your hike through the woods may have gotten its start before the Mayflower landed!

Storm chasers greet the spring looking up at the sky, sniffing the moisture returning from the Gulf of Mexico and watching for tumbled clouds to rise through the troposphere and throw tantrums of thunder, lightning, and hail. But it pays to look down as well. The advance guard of spring’s convective pyrotechnics may be an unobtrusive little plant peering up at you beside a snow drift in the woods.

The Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011

blizzard3-2011The cloud tops are up to 20,000 feet here in Caledonia, and about two minutes ago the first impressively bright flash of lightning lit the blizzard swirling around my apartment. Thundersnow! Rare, but  not unexpected tonight, and now that it has arrived, I’m continuing to see sporadic flickers of lightning. That initial one was a doozy, though, and all I can think is, Cool! How often does one get to hear thunder rumble through the teeth of a February blizzard?

Man, is it blowing out there!

All eyes have been on this winter storm for the past several days, watching it move from forecast models into reality. Nowcloud-tops-2011here it is, and it is a humdinger. Anywhere from a minimum of 12 up to 16 inches of snow is predicted to dump on our area, and south of us it only gets worse. Pink is the color that indicates heavy snowfall on my radar color table, and I don’t recall ever seeing such a large expanse of it covering my screen before. Between now and sometime tomorrow morning is when the heaviest snowfall is supposed to occur, and looking outside my window at the maelstrom swirling dimly out of the midnight sky, I see nothing to contradict that prognosis.

blizzard4-2011Ah! Another flash of lightning and another rumble of thunder! This is nice. Imagine that–me, an avowed snow grinch, enjoying a blizzard! But I have to say, this storm appears to be living up to all expectations. I honestly don’t recall that I’ve ever experienced thundersnow before, so I’m really pleased to be getting such a novel form of entertainment.

The three fairly recent radar grabs and the water vapor image on this page will give you an idea of what a truly wild evening this is. Click on the images to enlarge them. The first and third are basic winter reflectively images, with the latter offering a more zoomed-in look at southern Michigan. Look at all that pink! Interrogating a few of the deeper hues has given me reads of nearly 40 Dbz, and that’s nothing compared to elsewhere, and perhaps to what yet lies in store for us.

blizzard-2011-wvAs for the second screen, that shows cloud tops. The teal colored blobs indicate tops of 20,000 feet or greater, where thundersnow is likeliest to occur. And the fourth image depicting water vapor gives a macro view of what the entire system looks like as an immense entity sweeping eastward, with the dry slot punching upward into Illinois.

This may be one for the history books. I’m glad I stocked up on groceries, because I doubt I’ll be venturing out tomorrow. I doubt anyone will be. I’m certain that all the schools will be closed, and quite possibly many businesses as well. It will be a good day to hunker down and feel grateful for being indoors.

Zang! Another bright flash. I just got a phone call from my friend Brad Dawson, who lives down near Gun Lake. He tells me that a big towerblizzard6-2011500 feet from his house is getting continually struck. That has to be an experience, and from the looks of things, it’s apt to be one that continues through the night. Lacking any similar tall objects here, the lightning isn’t as constant, but it continues to flicker, and the storm itself is intensifying. What the heck–here’s one last image: a current radar scan. I just got a reading of 43.5 Dbz in one of the darker blobs of pink!

This is one howler of a winter storm system. But I’m done watching it for now. It’ll still be here in the morning. Time for me to hit the sack and enjoy the light show for a while before I fade out. Good night!

For the Birds

The little fellow you see here paused long enough for me to snap his photo, but his repose was fleeting. Inaction is a concept foreign to goldfinches when they’re in feeding mode, which is pretty much from sunrise to sunset. (Left click on photos to enlarge them.)

Just outside my sliding glass door, a blizzard of finches descends on my feeding station early in the morning, and the party continues throughout the day. Other wild birds join in the melee–chickadees, white-breasted and rosy-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, sparrows, and a male and female downy woodpecker. Occasionally a shy junco or two will put in a brief appearance, and a big bruiser of a bluejay flits in now and then, brashly announcing his presence with a cry that lets the whole neighborhood know he’s here, and whacks away at the suet with his wedge-like beak.

When killing frost signals the last gasp of the growing season, then, like a changing of the guard, the plants come in off my balcony and the bird feeding station goes out. Two tube feeders–one filled with wild bird mix, the other with black oil sunflower seed–hang from the station’s metal arms in company with a bag of thistle seed for the finches. This year, determined to attract a woodpecker or two if I could, I also hung out a mesh onion bag full of suet and slapped a couple more hunks out on the balustrade. It’s as a complete a smorgasbord as any bird could hope for, and the response has been supremely rewarding. It has included, I’m happy to say, the woodpeckers–a sprightly gentleman with a red bar across his head, and his consort, a perky little lady without the bar, each showing up when the other isn’t there and gorging with mighty singleness of purpose on the suet.

During the winter months, the feathery circus out there on the balcony reminds me that life goes on even when bitter winds blow. Today I tripoded my camera by the sliding door, intent on capturing a few images from the carnivalia. With so many birds thronging the feeding station, you’d be surprised at how difficult it can be to get a decent shot. These are not creatures who like to sit still, let alone pose for the camera. The bright-eyed goldfinch to your  left complied for about a second, long enough to look coy and unspeakably cute. It’s not for nothing that a bunch of these little guys and gals is called a “charm.”

The woodpeckers and nuthatches were more demanding. I had to wait for them, and they had a way of showing up when I had walked away from the window. I did finally manage to catch them at an opportune time. The nuthatches are a favorite of mine, part comedian and part acrobat, with no apparent sense of up or down nor any regard for the law of gravity.

Talking about the weather has for me never been synonymous with shallow conversation. There is a time of year when I find few topics more fascinating. Unfortunately, winter isn’t

that time. Music, too, inexhaustible though it may be as a pursuit, has its limitations for me as a focus for blogging. In a word, I just don’t always have musical or weatherly stuff to write about, and I don’t like stretching too far for material. It’s a big world, filled with all kinds of interest and plenty of alternatives when subject matter gets thin. The birds are at the window day in and day out, chattering, flitting, quarreling, and consuming black oil sunflower seed with marvelous rapidity. They deserve a nod if not my outright gratitude. When snow cocoons the northwoods and whirls across the parking lot, they make me smile, and they’ll see me through till spring.

So this post is for the birds.

Or had you been thinking that all along?

Late-November Severe Weather Outbreak In Progress

Now here’s something you don’ see very often on November 22 in the Great Lakes: supercells cruising across northern Illinois. I’d be very happy to be on either the one northwest of Toulon or the one northwest of Princeton. The storms are extending along the cold front northeast on into Wisconsin.

Whoops! The one down by Toulon is now tornado-warned. Imagine that! Here are some radar grabs. Click on them to enlarge.

And with that, I’m signing off.

Lightning Storm over Caledonia

The day after my October 23 chase out in northwest Missouri and southwest Iowa, thunderstorms blew across West Michigan. Watching the MCS move in on my radar, I decided to try my hand at a few lightning photographs. I had learned a few essential tips since my last attempt, and this looked like a fantastic opportunity to see what kind of a difference they made.

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The photos shown here were shot from the balcony of my apartment in Caledonia. Click on them to enlarge them. They may not be National Geographic quality, but they’re not bad. Fact is, one of my photos that night was my best lightning shot ever. Unfortunately, I accidentally erased it only minutes after I took it. You could hear my screams of anguish and bonking of my head against the wall all the way to Sam’s Joint.

What you see on this page are just compensation prizes. They’ll do, though. They’re mementos of what was probably the last lightning any of us around here will see this until next spring. Snow is in the forecast a few days hence, and with two months before it officially starts, the long winter is already winding up the mainspring and getting set to unleash.