Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

I mean there's a pretty big park there, centrally located I believe

 

Wildfire, I suppose. I see a bunch of trees and the Minnesotan in me calls it a forest.

 

We had wind speeds officially clocked at 80.6 mph this morning.

 

Sorry my California wildfire expectation is it’s not news unless it gets into the thousands of acres which says more about the state of Cali than anything else. Central Park being slightly more than 800 acres would be a bullet dodged in the West. Again that says more about us than the original post. Much like Minnesota would pat us on the head and call us cute if we complain about lows dipping below freezing and highs in the 40s. That’s cold for coastal California and you better believe I’m in full gear. But that’s a warm snap for everyone else north of the Missouri compromise.

 

If it was 800 acres in the heart of LA, you’d take notice.

 

Forest Park in STL is 1,371 acres.

 

Speaking of Mother Nature, it seems like next week we'll do our usual "Hit a high temp in the 60s and then have a cold front knock 30 degrees off it in just a couple of hours" routine. Shorts on Wednesday, puffy coats on Thursday!

 

Our average first freeze is Nov. 22. We’ve had them as early as mid-October and as late as early January. No freeze in my 10-day forecast yet, so we might make it past Turkey Day, I hope.

 

I still wouldn’t call it a forest fire

 

Here in Eastern Mass. they are accurately called brush fires. There have been a ton of them since we have had no real rain since Labor Day and falling leaves create ideal fuel. As this region is both heavily wooded and heavily populated, it's a real issue even if individually the fires are not all that large. One was adjacent to a municipal golf course in Lynn, which created amazing video of Sunday golfers playing away with smoke all around them and flames not that far away. There have been Red Flag warnings every day for the past week due to high winds.

 

Got home from work yesterday and had two trees go down in the high winds. I look forward to the day I only have one small yard with small trees in it to worry about.

 

I can't begin to describe how much I loathe this time of year: 5 p.m. - dark; 6 p.m. - already fallen asleep on the couch; 7 p.m. - fighting myself to keep from going to bed because I know I'd be up at 2 a.m.
Holy cow.