A Picture Perfect Finish to A Stormy June!

The Prangley Girls having a great day at the park with Dad!

I have been at the Park with my kids and for good reason. You see the feast we had at Armstrong Park! BJ is under the table there somewhere eating up some of the scraps. I made an incredible lunch which included peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches, chips, water, and cookies. :) This was my way of saying so long to a month of June that produced 6 tornadoes and dozens of storm reports. It was a month where I was away from my family a little too much and I cannot thank them enough for their support. Julie my wife gets the "Wife of the Year Award" hands down. Today was a much needed break. We went through tons of bread and fed the hissing geese and ducks.

The geese liked the bread a little too much. If you look closely you can see them fighting in the background. At first I thought it was Megan and Abbey going at it once again since I am used to playing referee during the day. But the girls were having so much fun they didn't argue one bit which was a first. I didn't even have any complaints about the weather out at the park and ran into a lot of great folks. I am asked a lot if I mind talking about the weather and I always say of course not! I have been talking about the weather since I was 3 years old. It is not just a job to me but a way of life. Being able to share my love of weather with others is what it is all about! Everybody was asking where summer is. Well, if you look at Monday's highs it may shock you that Billings, Montana was warmer than Lafayette, Indiana. How is this possible? It is all about that La Nina jet stream that brought us a turbulent June. In this case it is blocking all the hot weather to our south and west as it takes a big dip over us in the Midwest.This theme may be repeated over again plenty of times in July. I will have more on this on Tuesday's blog.


It is hard to believe we have had only one day of 90 degrees or above in June. Well actually it isn't because Weather Team 18 did call for a much cooler summer than normal. Not to pat myself on the back....don't worry I am very humble and will always be in this business. One big reason for this forecast coming true was our rainy Spring and start to our summer. The sun's energy is being used to evaporate all of our ground moisture instead of heating the ground and allowing our air to really heat up. Remember the earth is heated from the ground and if it saturated with moisture it slows down this process. Secondly, all this evaporation is causing more thunderstorms to pop than normal which also acts to overturn or cool the atmosphere as it brings down cool air from aloft. We all know that Midwest rainfall in the summertime depends a lot on ground moisture. That we have plenty of!

Now it is now time to get back outside. This weather is well deserved and long overdue. We all know our picnic weather doesn't last too long this time of year so make sure to tune in tonight and I will let you know how long it will last and even include a sneak peak to your big 4th forecast! Today's blog song of the day is none other than U2's beautiful day!