Keeping My Grandma Safe & Making Sure She Sends Us Some Rain!

Usually I call my grandmother every Sunday, but last night I called her a couple of times due to tornado warnings in Lake County, Florida. There were at least two tornadoes near her home last night and today I can breathe a sigh of relief that everybody is safe and sound. I told my Grandma or "Meemaw" that I would have been doing live cut-ins last night to warn the entire area, but amazingly there were no updates or cut-ins on her television stations so I was even more relieved that I called. Tornadoes at night can be a scary thing. My Meemaw was grateful and she told me she would send us some needed rain next week. I told her she can send the rain, but do not send the tornadoes. I am concerned about possible strong storms from this system that will move our way next Tuesday and Tuesday night so make sure to stay tuned for the latest. Meemaw, you are the best and I will call you again on Sunday with better weather.

Here at home we are still stuck in July even though autumn officially begins at 5:51 a.m. You can see why. The jet stream is well north of our area like we would see in July and this has allowed widespread warmth to take over much of the country. The good news in this quiet pattern is that we have not had any severe weather to worry about. Last night we talked about a secondary severe weather season we have here in Indiana. September has produced tornadoes in Tippecanoe County as recently as 1999. On September 28, 1999 we had an F1 tornado in Battle Ground with wind speeds near 100 mph. If that is not enough proof for you, we had another September tornado in Tippecanoe County which was an F2 (wind speeds close to 150 mph) on September 14, 1965. So we will keep our guard up and continue to watch Live Doppler 18 for you, especially next week.

Blog Answer of the Day: The longest track tornado in Indiana history was the Monticello tornado with a 121 mile path that began near Otterbein and lifted just west of Valentine, Indiana. At times the tornado had wind speeds up to near 250 mph. Even though it only received an F4 rating you could certainly make a case it was an F5. Today there is still twisted metal strewn in the hills by Lake Freeman, even though it happened 33 years ago on April 3, 1974!

So enough of this tornado talk...here is the big weekend forecast you have been waiting for and it looks like your last day of summer will bring highs of 84 degrees and the first day of autumn it will be 88 degrees. Last year temperatures were running about 15 to 20 degrees cooler as you see above. This year instead of sweatshirts and hot chocolate you will need shorts and ice water! It will be the warmest start to autumn since 1980! You stay cool and hopefully you can find a pool!