This area of thunderstorms went through early this morning and headed southeast along the minnesota, canada border. I can't seem to find any 'news' on it. But I would think it extinguished any fires still burning up there.

I would think if you had reason for concern, an in-house filtration system would be necessary to keep the air inside clean.

Our house doesn't have an air exchanger but we open doors and have a bathroom fan exiting the house. So, any vacuum created inside the house by any of these actions, will somehow cause outside air to enter the house. Again, probably not as bad as actually being 'outside' but certainly not completely 'safe'.

edit: Don't forget your clothes dryer sucking out 100 to 200 cubic feet per minute. That's 1000 to 2000 cf in ten minutes. (I'm guessing the air that replaces it comes from outside).

They said the air in Duluth (MN) was so bad yesterday, that breathing the air was like smoking 7 cigarettes a day!

😤

The forest-fire smoke is very pervasive. It's the gray stuff streaming off the US coast into a big blob in the middle of the North Atlantic. Of course Saharan dust can go from Africa west to the Caribbean areas at times.

PS: Sun about 7pm in the west was BLOOD RED! Never seen anything like it.

Prevailing winds switched to the WSW yesterday, making it a lot less smokey here.

Today it's NNW and no smoke at all.

Some of the MN fires are controlled 100% now, assuming from the rains up there.

Interesting the other night on the news, the smoke map showed smoke from the MN fires and fires just north of there in Canada, were traveling ESE and incorporating into the Canadian fires further East.

These Canadian clipper systems keep pushing the plumes southeast into the Midwest and East. Still, does not feel like a "normal" Summer to me. Miss the Summers of my youth! Very different, daily brief thunderstorms , then back in the pool. NO DA!N SMOKE! Weather/Climate? suc!s today in 2026! Feel sorry for the young folk.

Oh for the good old days! 🤣

Smoke cleared out a bit from scattered storms and a cool front. But the cooler NW winds behind the front continue to bring some more in.

This is an interesting chart from NOAA.

1930-1935 were a real 'corker'.

Corker is a term many of the previous 'Old Timers' up here used for ridiculously hot spells.

Bill, about to be August, used to be our wettest month climatalogically, lately, it has brought drought. Autumn is complicated here. VERY arid, warm and sunny (longest heat wave was actually recorded in September)...., and much precipitatoin ,dependent on tropical activity (direct or indirect). Supposed to be a strong el Niño though and that will depress hurricanes in the Atlantic. Not sure how el Niño affects systems in the Gulf, but storms originating there, have often had the biggest effects on the NE and Mid Atlantic, Atlantic systems often curve out to sea. I love meteorology, had to do it all again, I'd be a weatherman! LOL!

You'd do better forecasting than these bozos around here.

Last night at 10:00pm, forecasters were saying TS coming with 0.4".

The future radar show a strong, wide line of TS with the heaviest part going right over our area by 11:00 pm.

Woke up this morning and it were dry as a bone.

I couldn't look back far enough on the radar to see what exactly happened but I could see the Twin Cities and SE MN was having some pretty good showers going on.

The upside, it's my day for watering with the restrictions rules. Even date, even address #.

So, spent the morning with the high volumn water head on the hose. And with the high 80's everyday, everything is growing BTN, as long as it gets water.

I'm heading out now to finish up for tonight.

Hang in there, what things look like now, is not necessarily what they might look like by the end of summer. Could be great, who knows?

August is the driest month here in the May-Sept stretch. The sun angle is lower so heat-induced storms are fewer, tropical stuff is not at its max and not yet reaching inland to my area, and cold fronts prb'ly the weakest of the year. But nearer the Atlantic coast, those areas are seeing more and more tropical stuff, so they're getting that rain. On occasion, tropical activity might come up into my inland area and disrupt a drought, like it did in Aug 2024 (Aug 2021 had big tropical rains here, but there was no previous drought). But El Nino is strong now, so that's almost impossible here this year.

"Woke up this morning and it were dry as a bone."

Same here. Not a drop, even though the forecast said 90% change of storms overnight. The system passed too far south.

Another drenching day here, drought warnings replaced with flood warnings. Tornado watches were up from neart the Canadian border in NYS to Delaware. Had local tornado warnings but so far it was only very heavy rain, no wind, no hail, so, happy. August is usually the most torid month of the year due to humidiy levels

See, what did I tell ya! 🤣

Great the rains finally came, just so they know when to stop.

Getting really dry after two weeks of nothing but sun, wind and hot temperatures.

Supposed to be 48d for a low tonight here.

Never had a freeze in July before. We have in August but generally light and spotty.

Had a couple mid 70's last two days but be back in the 90's by Saturday, still 60's at night though, so that helps a lot.

Tomorrow is my day to water, again.

I can't complain bc everything is looking great!

I'm working on a new project and post up a report for the season.

It's a little hectic here being I had to move all my plant tables and rain barrels away from the house, so the roofers and siding guys can do their jobs. They might be coming soon.

Bill, I became an anti-camper once I was in the Poconono Mountains in late August and we needed space heaters for the night. In coastal areas, August is just torrid. I was out on LI for a weekend a few years ago, guy from SC could not believe how humid it can get out there. Dew points were the highest I ever experienced, upper 70, not even that hot..., I was sitting in a pool of my own sweat!

Low of 50F -- pretty darn chilly this morning. There's a phenomena called the January thaw where temps often briefly rise well above avg in late Jan, but I notice often there is a late July "cool" where it briefly goes well below avg.

Edit: I checked my more accurate min/max thermometer, and the low was 49F.

It's been nice, right away in the mornings with these cooler temperatures and the plants are showing it too. Been just too hot for many of what grows around here. I might even loose one in particular, or plain give it up bc it's too much work keeping it alive and thriving.

What gets a little frustrating is how fast the soil moisture disappears. When I water trees like the hemlocks that are 6-7 ft. tall with a broad root system, by the third or fouth day, they show they need a drink again, badly.

It's nice we only have to deal with the high heat for a couple or three months.

Around here, Crape Myrtles are in full bloom. They reach small tree size here (15-20 feet).

P.S., Beng, interesting about the late July cool period, definitely in it here, only low to mid 80's by day and 60's at night Does not even feel like summer.

41 North, in late July a couple summers ago, I had 3 mornings in a row of 49F, and some nearby WV mountain valleys had morning lows in the 30s. Of course it warms up alot in the day......

The central-east and northeast US is predicted to have generally slightly below-avg temps for the next 2 weeks.

It was 66d again last evening and a light shower passed over the area during the night.

The heat is returning here for the next week, but the cooler nights make it more bearable, for the plants at least.

//////

My D. Lonicera cuttings thrived so I planted one just for fun.

From a 3" broken branch (~10" tall?). ;-)

^___

This is part of my new 'Multi Plant' mulched bed, just off the deck.

I knew I'd get around to doing something like this.

I'm not just a 'Tree Guy' anymore haha!

eta: picture below:

Finally found a spot for the blue star juniper.

The diervilla isn't easy to see against the new brown mulch but I also placed a bunch of tulip bulbs along the back side of the mulch ring, near the flower bed, for some early color.

I Probably will have enough room for a couple of perenials too.

Went to 98d Sunday with clear skies and the heat index was something like 107d. 🥵

70d low last night.

It's surprising how many plants here sort of 'balk' at these temperatures.

Hopefully we've hit the highest temps for the season but not necessarily so.

Mid 80's to mid 90's over the next 10-day forecast.

No rain yet and it was my day to water yesterday, so I used my stationary ground sprinkler set down a bit for a soaking, so I didn't have to stand around outside holding a hose, although I still did some of that too. I get some afternoon shade out there if I do it right.

I removed the planting bed where the thuja p. was planted on Saturday.

It wasn't needed anymore and a little crowded for mowing.

The only reason I planted the plicata there was it was the most protected area I had at the time.

No use trying to plant grass yet with this kind of heat and dryness.

The wild rose is gone too upon request by DW for a nicer, lower flowering shrub. It's always good when she gets involved. 😉

Hope everyone is staying cool and getting rain. 🤔☺️

Prb'ly no 90s here for the next 2 weeks -- after that, can't say. Joe Bastardi says my area should have avg rain for some weeks, but often in the summer that means long periods w/o rain then a big rain for a day or two. Had enough rain recently that have only needed to water tomatoes and the latest-planted (last 0-3 yrs) items.

Our heavy rains, 4-1/2" July 7 & 8 would've served us better getting an inch or so each week until now. But you take what you get, right?

I was impressed with the winterberry plants. They did so well the last 3 weeks of intense heat and dryness, that I finally watered them on Friday for the first time this season (I didn't want to lose them).

I figure if they can do that good during a significant dry spell, they're a keeper.

The main point I was testing them is, I didn't want them if I had to water them every few days but now I know they can take a hard dry spell here without damage. They even have their berries still attached, which were set ~2 weeks ago. ☺️

Not the summer I was expecting, another deluge incoming, 5-6 inches of rain. Still not a normal season to be found anymore!

How does the heavy rains affect you?

Does your soil drain well?

Or do you have a muddy mess for a few days?

Bill, I have 5 large, Southern Magnolias, Gingko, two Redwoods and Bald Cypress. They seem to suck it up. Yes, it drains, but I am on low ground (30 feet above sea level)..., but am adjacent to lower land that is seasonally flooded. Winter was not wet, so aquafer is not overwhelmed. Water flows under the house in the water table down to the south where it enters the Wetlands. No water in the basement yet, but when Irene came in, there was 6 inches down there. That year saw over 80 inches of rain. It was a record. So, even with any issues of Climate Change, still a wet climate.., rather have flooding issues though than FIRE!

I guess I'd rather have neither. haha!

The first year I moved up here, spring of 1976, fires were rampant in my area.

Since then, I can think of one other time, several years ago, that a grass fire went through the swamp north of my place. Only one home was lost (they had their small yard surrounded by a hedge of 30ft. red pines, 5 or 6 rows deep), when the grass fire reached that, it turned the windbreak into a blazing torch, devouring the home.

You in the downer soil series?

We're supposed to get a low of 50d by Wednesday morning and that's considered cool for this area. But again, we have had spotty light frost in August before.

Still experiencing 80's for the next 10 day forecast and it's getting seriously dry here, but appears that the 90's are gone, at least for a while.

Light rain falling as we speak but only a tenth or two forecast for today.

Even that little bit helps.

I spread Langbeinite over a large part of the yard yesterday, after realizing it might've been many years (8-10?) since I last did that. Then, for good measure, did some hose watering to partially dissolve it, so some additional rain is welcome.

Also, planted grass seed in the bare spot (shown in photo, earlier in this thread) of the planting area removal.

Sometimes August can be hottest month of the year, yet sometimes, can be on the cloudy/misty/humid side with not much rain but then not a lot of high heat either. Maybe like a SW US monsoon season.

Yes, we have a wide variety of weather types up here. 🌇

edit: 0.05" total. 🤷‍♂️

Models show a consistent southwesterly flow into the US east areas -- that's a good rainmaker & keeps high temps limited by clouds and rain.

https://weather.rap.ucar.edu/model/index.php?model=gfs

For us up here, SW winds mean we will get the hot dry air of the desert SW.

Nuff' said.

Rain! Yay!!

BUT -- there is something that strikes me as odd. I was working outside for a few hours in the light rain, good day to plant the new winterberry I bought since it's cooled down and it's a good soaker of a rain. Nothing odd there. After about three hours, though, the pace picked up and it ended up downpouring, and it felt like it had switched to a cold rainall of a sudden. That's odd for early August.

@Porkchop: That just means the rain was suddenly coming down from much higher up, bringing the cold air there down w/it. The ultimate of that action is when coming from so far up, that it's hail coming down....

^^ I did not know that, thanks for the info. It felt so odd, though.

It rained pretty much all through the nite and into late morning here, a good soaker and a blessing.

Went from drought conditions a month ago to soil saturation. Another dumping of rain tomorrow, up to 4 inches. Which the West could get some of THIS! Seems like the country is divided on multiple levels.., add the WET EAST and the DRY WEST to the division! But that may be to much a generalizaton, looks like Florida is still dry and if Hurricane season is depressed due to El Niño, that will curtail their rainfall.

I understand when you're talking about the weather, it's from your perspective 41.

And that's okay.

But it got me thinking about our dry weather out here (West).

And I've been saying this for years now, that I'm close enough to the Great Plains that many years, we tend to get in on their weather which is normally hot, dry summers (the jet streams travel West to East so that's understandable) and winters is another story.

For years, when I looked for the weather in west central MN, I hear the broken record response of 28" average a year (roughly) which would be nice but hardly ever happens. I can vouch for more like 10-12", counting snow melt (might just be in my particular location and occasionally can get ~16").

Now the 100th meridian is said to be the dividing line between the wetter forested East and the hotter drier Great Plains in the West.

Okay then, tell me what's wrong with this picture.

Note the dry, light tan strip that runs along the 100th meridian, starting in Texas. Now see how once you get to Nebraska, that light tan strip veers off, as much as 40d into NW and West Central Minnesota, which is 400 miles from the 100 meridian (I'm close to the 95th meridian about 100 miles from the ND border).

But it's all good because I know my climate and weather and know how to handle them.

I've already conceded to the fact that modern weather reports are worthless (why have reports that change every half hour?) along with legacy maps with dividing lines and annual moisture amounts that evidently were put together without a lot of serious research.

Did I mention they're having drought in the desert southwest?

<rant off>

Interesting about the 100th meridian. My average precip around 47-50 '', pretty much disributed year round. I think it is actully increased from historical average but the distribution is wack, there can be flash droughts and then, monsoonal rains. Warm weather precip is highly erratic (drought to flooding), Winter on average seems wetter, with more rain in the mix. Last winter was different, relatively dry, very long deep cold and snow that never melted. Lost one of my figs and major die back on another, recuperating now (I don't protect them). Yes, lots of drought in the West. People here complain about the rain, but realize it is better than drought and fire! Most of our rain comes out of the Gulf or the Southwest Atlantic, almost 0 Great Lake effect precip.

I was being sarchastic about drought in the desert SW.

How can you have a drought when it's already a desert?

Eastern Washington and E. Oregon are having wild fires at this time, many, many of them.

https://www.frontlinewildfire.com/washington-state-wildfire-map/

Oh well, I still have a hose and I see tiny blades of grass poking up already on my old mulch circle. :-)

"How can you have a drought when it's already a desert?"

I disagree with that, American deserts can get as much as 10 inches plus of annual rainfall , but can still be pushed into severe drought. Might not have as much burning as in a Mediterranan or Maritime Pacific climate with chapparel or forest, but still poses a challenge for plants and wildlife. Not true?

'American deserts can get as much as 10 inches plus of annual rainfall'

But this is not the norm and might occur only once in 8 to 10 years, possibly two years in a row. And that's not a lot of rain by any stretch of the imagination.

The biggest parameter with a desert isn't just the lack of rain.

The strata are deep and so porous that when it does rain, it all soaks away with little to no moisture retention.

And deserts get some of the highest temperatures, 116-120d daytime temperatures, with blazing sun with clear skies.

Look at Lake Powell and Lake Mede, they lose roughly a combined 4.9 billion gallons per day (counting both evaporation and loses into the canyon walls and tunnels surrounding them).

IOW: Deserts are deserts for a reason.

We got a good soaking rain last night. Not severe but lasted a couple of hours and was moderate to heavy, alternating between the two.

A few days short of a month, since the heavy rains of 4-1/2" July 7 & 8.

These JIT rains are the best with my soil type. ☺️

As usual, it was a cold front moving through leaving us with a high of 72d today and high 70's the rest of the week, with possible periods of rain right along. ⛈️

Mid 90's by day, 75 by night, current dewpoint is 75 F and heat index of 105. Meantime, rain does not stop, chances of heavy downpours everyday. Soiils are so saturated, we got sink hole issues. Not the Summer I was expecting, depressing!

Pretty heavy TStorm this morning that blew down all my tall flowers including joe-pye-weeds and milkweeds. About an inch in 45 minutes. Rainfall since the drought that had been in place thru April has been pretty good this growing season, tho fruits/nuts/seeds are sparse due to the spring freezes.

Looks like UBG gets some too, yesterday.

Yep...so hilarious...forecast today was for 'showers', instead we are getting a massive thunderstorm. It's possible this will bring my monthly rain to close to 3", which is a nice place to be on August 8th!

So as I posted earlier, big picture is in spite of the dry spring, a dry spring is a lot less troublesome than a dry summer, so things are tracking now WAY better than 2024 and 2025. That's a huge relief. BUT, with the way in recent years we are whiplashing between wet and dry, I wonder when the 'spigot' is going to get turned off again? It will also be interesting to me if regional (eastern US - NC got huge, drought busting rains recently, too) rainfall tracks to hurricane rainfall. In an average year central MD* gets at least some good rain from a hurricane or TS remnants. That barely happened in 2024 & 2025. Will we now get some hurricane rains, again, even though the NHC predicted a slow hurricane season? Stay tuned.

* - I revised to say central because I mean my part of MD. IIRC, Ben maybe got some rain from a system that tracked far inland, and I think the eastern shore of MD got a bit in another system. But for me, it was unusual not to be "rescued" from a later summer/autumn dry spell by hurricane or TS remnants.

After weather reports yesterday of 'AM Showers', we got the tail end of a front with lightning and thunder with two separate hard downpours, one with marble sized hail, followed by another without hail.

We picked up 0.2" altogether but further north (20 mi), the line of storms was stronger, and it rained more but included 2" dia. hail with a lot of damage.

Have backed off on the irrigation and letting things go longer lately, for better root development. More rain forecast for Tuesday PM.

UpperBay, the Caribbean have been very dry, drought conditions in Puerto Rico, Hispañola (DR & Haiti), and Cuba. Probably el Niño related and African dust. You won't been seeing northern tropical precip in the near future. Locally, we have not had to rely on any this season, went from pretty bad drought to saturated in a heartbeat. Have a friend in Austria and she said it has been hellacious with record heat (106 F) and severe drought, native shrubs and trees dying. Curious how the western sides of two continents both dealing with record heat and drought (North America and Eurasia), meantime, the eastern sides of both continents currently very wet. NYT had an article recently about how significantly the precip has been increasing in North China (which borders the Gobi) and can be very, very arid, especially in Winter. Article said that precip has increased so much that grasslands are replacing near desert conditions and China is now raising cattle and is beginning to be important sources of beef. I believe the strong el Niño will lead the East to have a relatively stormy and WET Winter season (rain or snow, depending on temps), West Coast too should turn very, very WET. Oh, and before that, California may experience rainfall from an increase in Eastern Pacific hurricanes (another el Niño signal). Leave it to California as the queen of superlative disasters..., earthquakes, drought, wildfires, floods, and maybe now..., hurricanes!

Bill, fortunately, hail is very uncommon here, much more common in the interior of continents, once read an explanation for this from somewhere. I think it has something to do with a nearby ocean modifying the upper atmosphere cold you need for hail. I literally only remember hail twice in my whole life.

Been in this area for 50 years now and this 'damaging hail' event we just had, is the first time that's happen to me, so my concern level is low. ;-)

Generally, when it does happen, it's a short run of 20-30 seconds of pea to marble sized (non-damaging) hail and tbh, it's not a regular occurrence and I've probably only seen it myself, half a dozen times since I moved up here, so it is what it is.

But the accompanying moisture has been nice. I have 3 planting areas, now plant-less, leveled off and growing grass (just work that has to be done).

So, where's the sinkhole? Not under the house, I hope.

You can't make a hole that lasts around here. When they did work on some sewer pipes, the trench was 8 ft deep and 25ft wide. Any narrower and the sand just keeps caving in from the sides. Ponds we dug on some land in the country would slowly disappear over time and need to be re-dug occasionally.

Bill, the Hagerstown City park artificial lake has to be dredged every 30-40 yrs because of sediment build-up. I saw it some yrs ago when they built a small barge by the lakeside w/a clam-shell dredge, floated it out & dug-out sludge onto an adjacent floating platform, which was pulled ashore, dug-out there w/front-end loaders & placed in trucks to take away. Rather interesting operation. Where I worked at a power plant they had to do a similar operation in front of the water screen-house on the New River to keep a minimum depth there for water intake.

Yes, you can't mess with Mother Nature, at least and not have it last very long.

There was a TV show on, in the past, that showed what the future would be like *if* there weren't people around to do maintenance. Everything would slowly be swallowed up again by the effects of climate and nature, to the point that even big cities would be almost unrecognizable, if someone was there to see it.

Sorry OT. lol