Make no mistake about it, temperatures in the mid to upper 70s this time of year means you've selected 5 winning lottery numbers. Picking the remaining red Powerball is all you need to do to walk away with the jackpot. Adding full sunshine, low humidity, and light winds in with the temperatures, it's fair to say the Midwest hit mother natures version of the Powerball jackpot. The great thing about this game is that there's no losers. Nobody gets rich, but we all walked away w

Before I get into the meat of this post, I wanted to take a few moments to say thanks for the outpouring of support regarding the passing of my my furbaby Emma Rose. My tribute to her generated over 27,200 responses from around the Midwest! That tells me that many of you have experienced a similar loss and know full well the gravity and emptiness that comes with the experience. In fact, many of you (by way of your own stories) sighted hope, love, faith, deeply held memories,

Despite the fact many of us saw frost over the weekend (lows of 30-34 were common Saturday), the coldest weather of the season has made a hasty retreat. In its wake, Indian summer conditions have replaced it and the future looks "bright" right on through the weekend. The Climate Prediction Center shows above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation in its 6-10 day outlook for the period October 25th-29th. The best of both worlds! Below, you can see the upper level r

In the short term the weather pattern remains very benign. This post is going to mainly look at forecasts for the end of October and early November. While it's a ways out, I think it's the most interesting thing to look at in terms of the weather for our region as the short term will be dominated by warm and dry conditions. In the European Ensemble forecast above, valid November 2, the pattern is finally showing some signs of life. Notice dual troughs in the jet stream coming

FEELING MORE LIKE FALL A potent but fast moving disturbance raced across the region Thursday night and Friday replacing rain with gusty winds and much colder temperatures. The afternoon satellite image from Friday afternoon showed plenty of instability clouds and even some showers on the back side of the system. Temperatures Friday over much of the area were 12 to 22 degrees colder than 24 hours earlier. The drops were more substantial east of the Mississippi than west, due t