The Nichols family and our crew take a tour of a Crawfordsville Fire Station.

Labor Day is almost here.  Part of our holiday includes spending time with families, like the Nichols during the MDA telethon. Greg and Laura live in Crawfordsville with their two children James and Georgana. The children are this year’s MDA Goodwill Ambassadors.

Please include us in your Labor Day plans. Tune into the telethon Sunday night through Monday. Dozens of volunteers will be standing by to take your pledge. The money raised stays local, to help local families. This year, the MDA helped James buy new leg braces. And, he’ll probably need another pair before long. You know how boys grow! I’ll be on the telethon Monday afternoon. Tune in when you can!

The Nichols family

The low temperature dropped to 37 degrees at the Starke County Airport ASOS station near Knox this morning, making it one of the coldest August mornings in modern weather history in that area!

Most other areas recorded 40-45 degrees.

Record/near record cold was widespread across northern & north-central Indiana this morning.

Check out this story from the Associated Press:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hRBR6a_JUqYm7ZD1hzzJEx4fmgBwD9AAR0182

Temperatures of 40-45 are quite rare for late August………….in fact, this is looking like the coolest late August weather in 23 years.

Back in very late August 1986, similar temperatures occurred……….the coldest end to August since 1895 was in 1915.

The cold 37-44 temps in very late August of 1915 capped off a long stretch of record cool weather in August 1915.

These record/near record cold temperatures will occur this morning & tonight. 

The 40-45 temperatures area-wide are occurring 13 to 20 days EARLIER THAN NORMAL for the fall.

Below are the recorded Sunday morning lows/afternoon highs, plus my projected Monday & Tuesday morning lows & Monday & Tuesday morning highs: 

1.  CC reassures how good they are.  Enough said?  This team is on a mission this year.

2. Pioneer could be on their way.  What an impressive shut out win over Winamac.  Could we really see the South Newton/Pioneer match-up coming up in week three, be potentially for the conference championship?  Did I also mention Sectional 34 has these two teams and CC this year?

3. West side guts out a win, but Cass is really good too.  The Kings will be back.  Even in defeat they proved how good they still are.  West side pulled out the win, but it wasn’t as impressive as week one.

4. Harrison plays like the team we thought they were.  Not to make excuses for Jeff, but when you have the types of injuries they have, it is tough to overcome.

5. I’m keeping my eyes on North Montgomery.  They lost some players from last year, they returned some good players.  Can they repeat last season’s great year?

It is a cool day & a chilly overnight is on the way………………….

Many crops in the area are 2-3 weeks behind were they would be in a normal planting year, due to the early cool, wet conditions in our area.

Additionally, the cool conditions of this summer have slowed development of the corn & soybean crop & delayed the curing process.

Thus, unusually early frosts are on the mind of area growers & many are asking as to whether the unusual, recuring chill is an omen for early frosts & an early onset of winter & if so, will a hard winter set in.

The main player in this summer’s weather has been:

1.  The unusual James Bay low/trough deep into the eastern United States.

2.  A greatly weakened subtropical/Bermuda High (negative NAO)

3.  A weak Icelandic low over the North Atlantic (negative NAO)

The North Atlantic Oscillation, which tapers back & forth from negative, neutral & positive phases, has the greatest impact on U.S. & western Europe weather in summer.

However, it has been highly impactive on U.S. weather this summer with an unusually, highly persistent & very negative phase.

The highly negative phase appears to coincide with the lack of ANY sunspots (active, hot spots on the sun that increase solar output).  There have been few, if any sunspots for the past year……………this is highly unusual, given the fact that we were in a solar output peak in the late 1990s & early 2000s.

We are in a developing El Nino, which will likely peak in the moderate category by January.  The effects will begin to show up here by late September-October.  The general effects of the El Nino will last until May.

Moderate El Nino brings the following patterns to our area for fall-spring:

1.  Below normal snowfall

2.  Above normal temperatures

3.  Mix of below & above normal rainfall years

4.  Increase in severe potential in late fall/winter

The wild card is how the lack of solar output will mitigate El Nino’s effects on our area.  Will it decrease the warmer effects?  Will solar output pick up soon??

Interesting to note……………if not for the high amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, it might be even colder with frost in late August (like what happened in north-central Indiana in 1842), hard freeze in September (like what happened in the Midwest in late September 1835) during low solar output.

Early June 1859 had widespread frost across central & northern Indiana……………..this was all at the end of the “Little Ice Age” when solar output was extremely low & a series of volcanic eruptions combined with lower greenhouse production created cool weather.

This week looks dry with a warming trend after starting the week with near-record cool overnights.

After temperatures reach well into the 80s by late week, the mugginess will return by next Saturday night.

Showers & t’storms are possible Sunday………….for the latter half of the Labor Day weekend.

STAY TUNED, THIS TIMING MY BE TWEAKED AS FRESH NEW DATA ARRIVES ALL THIS WEEK!!

BELOW:  Map Projection for Sunday Afternoon, September 6:

The blues over our region represent lows of 40-45………………(even Saturday night looks chilly with lows of 47-53)

The darkest blues to our northwest are 30s with frost……………..

Thank you everyone for your reports!

Rainfall Totals August 27-28, 2009:

****After doing some quality-control analysis on the automated, digital rain gages, I found this total to be too high for this location.

This 2.06″ total is higher than the Doppler radar estimate of near 1″ for this location.  This digital station may need to be re-set.

All other automated stations accurately measured the rain in this region, including the Ladoga station with 1.41″………….again, that is a correct measurement.

All of the other data, automated or not, is A+ & of great benefit!