Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving day was quite nice this year. Skies were sunny and the afternoon temperature rose into the upper 40's. The remainder of the weekend will be a bit cooler and there may be some snow Sunday.
The lights on Monument Circle were turned on tonight. Thousands filled the streets downtown to watch the performances by several local talents as they sang Christmas carols and welcomed Santa to town. I wonder if Santa found a parking spot for his sleigh. There was a lot going on downtown with high school football at Lucas Oil stadium, the Pacers playing at Conseco and the Monument Circle tree lighting.

Icy Roads and No Power

Roads were a bit icy this morning. Overnight, the temperature dropped and we had some freezing rain in the area. This created some icy roads and put Franklin County Schools on a 2-hour delay this morning. There were several accidents reported where people were sliding into one another. I heard reports of up to 9 accidents on State Road 1 just outside of Brookville. No serious injuries that I heard of though due to the weather. Not sure if the ice was a surprise for road crews or if they just decided to save the salt they had because of the national salt shortage.

At 2:15 this afternoon, the electricity went out at school. The lights flickered a few times and then went out all together. I was surprised to find that there were very few emergency lights that worked in the building. The darkest hallways had none, while the classroom hallways did have backup lights. I left at 2:30 to go to the doctor in Connersville and passed an accident scene where a car had hit a power pole. However, the school secretary told me that the power failure was due to an accident at the intersection of State Road 121 and US 52. So, I'm not sure what caused the outage, but I noticed the power was back on when I passed the school on my way home at 4:45pm.

Cold Continues and Meteor Shines

The cold weather continues and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. The low this morning dropped down to 12F (-11C). The high temperature Friday and Saturday did not climb above 31F (-1C) which hasn't occurred since March 8 of this year. One more interesting note about the cold weather, my pond has frozen over. Of course it isn't frozen enough to walk on, but large geese can walk on it. I don't remember ever seeing it frozen this early.Now if we could just get a good snow on the ground like they have in the northern part of the state. Up to a foot of snow fell around South Bend as the lake effect snow machine kicked into high gear.
Here is an interesting event that happened late Friday afternoon over the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba in Canada. A meteor lit up the sky around 5:30pm. I haven't heard of anyone finding any meteorites, but I'm sure someone will in the spring after the snow melts. The meteor was estimated to be about 2 meters wide, but likely broke into many smaller pieces as it exploded in the atmosphere. Here is a video from the CBC.

Fire and Ice

The wildfires in California continue for a fifth day today. Over 41,000 acres have burned and hundreds of homes destroyed. Thankfully, the winds have subsided so that fire fighters can get some of the fires under control.

This morning's low temperatures were the coldest of the season. Lows hit the low 20's. I think tomorrow morning will be much colder though. The temperature this evening has already dropped to 20 degrees. Maybe we'll get into the mid teens!

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Okay, so maybe it's not as cold as Lois Jordan wanted Ella Fitzgerald to believe in 1949 when they sang the song together, but after being in the upper 50's this past week, the mid 30's felt cold. Plus, the wind today made it feel even colder. Wind chills were in the upper 20's most of the day.

I wrote a few weeks ago that we had our first snowflakes in the air, but today was the first day we had really big flakes of snow mixing in with the rain. I call it "chunky" rain. Hopefully there will be much more to come in the next few weeks! :-)

California is suffering through some very serious wildfires. Over 10,000 acres have burned east of LosAngeles as the dry Santa Ana winds blow in from the deserts to the east. Nearly 25,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes where the fires are raging while hundreds of homes and businesses have been destroyed.

Mild Weather for Now

Mild weather has returned, but we'll go back to cold weather by the weekend with even some snow showers in the area. There is quite a bit of snow and ice across the arctic, Canada, and even the northern plains of the US already. This helps build large masses of cold air that will drop south over the winter.

Winter Weather Returns

Once again, our weather has returned to an early winter pattern. Highs today reached the upper 30's and low 40's. A big change from two days ago when we were in the low 70's!

The South Dakota blizzard has come to an end. Some areas in the Black Hills received 4 feet of snow! With winds gusting to 70mph, the snow drifts were amazing. I wish we could have a blizzard here at home.

Indian Summer

Only in Indiana can you have snow flurries and sleet at the beginning of the week and then have Indian Summer at weeks end. The current streak of warm weather is forecast to continue through the end of the week. Highs will be in the low 70's.

October has been a month of transition with extreme high and low temperatures. The warmest day was October 12 with a high of 82 degrees. Just fifteen days later on October 27, the afternoon high was just 43 degrees. The coldest morning was 26 degrees on the 30th.

Rain continues to elude us. The monthly total was only 1.26".