Kiss the Pig Contest is Tonight & Dolly Continues to Hog the Weather Spotlight

Tonight is the big night at the Tippecanoe County Fair. It is the Kiss the Pig Contest and the Greased Watermelon Race taking place at the Coliseum. Remember to fill up Julie Krizen's TV-18 pig. All the proceeds go to the 4Her's and of course the one that raises the most money gets to kiss the pig. The best part is you can have a lot of fun and it goes to a good cause. It is great to hear that the money raised stays local. A big thanks goes out to Suzie Jero and the 4H coordinators that have made a difference in many lives including handing out 3 scholarships at 250 dollars each to Amber Bedwell, Matt De Golyer, and Dawn Cook. Congratulations! We have a lot of great and talented young people in our community and it is on display firsthand out at the fair. I still have my pig trophy from last year and display it with pride on my desk at home.

Now the big story today hogging all the attention is of course Hurricane Dolly that made landfall in Texas yesterday. The big impact it will have is flooding with 10 to 15 inches of rain. The fact that it made it up to a category 2 hurricane was impressive with wind speeds close to 100 mph before it quickly weakened after making landfall. Dolly is gulping up a ton of warm, moist, and tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico and it has a bearing on our weather. This storm may be bad news for Texas and Mexico but it is good news for us if you like unusually dry and cool air here at home. Dolly is intercepting the normally uncomfortable, sultry air mass that likes to pop thunderstorms this time of year here at home and that so often play havoc with those important plans. So instead of those 75 mph wind gusts like we saw at the fair in 2005 with severe thunderstorms we have been very lucky this year. Folks out at the fair are still talking about how tents went flying that day as Lafayette had its own little taste of hurricane force winds. Others remember 1999 for its heat. We had a heat index that averaged over 100 during the course of the entire week. But not this year! You can thank Dolly and those nice and comfortable northerly breezes.

Tropical systems in the Gulf of Mexico usually do have an impact on our weather here at home, not for the positive but the negative. Hurricanes hit and weaken over land to our south, but the remnants have been known to ruin many a weekends here in Lafayette. Notice Dennis and Rita in 2005 moved up and around the high pressure in the Atlantic Ocean. This steered heavy rains and breezy conditions all the way northward into Indiana even though they made landfall about a thousand miles away. The good news is that Dolly's track moved much farther west around a high pressure over Texas and as a result all of its moisture is being pushed into the mountains of Mexico where it will die out. Instead of the remnants energizing our cold front moving our way this weekend it will help starve it of moisture keeping our weekend forecast mainly dry. So don't cancel those plans! There is the big 5K run in Frankfort going on at the Hot Dog fest and it looks like there will be some good running weather like we saw this past weekend in Lafayette. You will see a few clouds like the picture below, but it will be more bark than bite!

I wanted to make sure to take this time and thank everybody once again for making the Zoo Run Run at Columbian Park this weekend a big success. We set a record with 429 runners. You see our News Channel 18 folks that finished the 3.11 miles. From left to right you have Brent (Nicole's husband), Nathan Caldwell (videographer), Laura Kirtley (our weekend anchor and reporter), Nicole Caan (our new main anchor), and Ted Hovermale (sales guy extraordinaire)! They all had a blast and that is what matters most. Great job! Over 4,000 dollars was raised for new zoo exhibits at Columbian Park. The Friends of Columbian Park Zoo thank you very much! Join me tonight once again from the Fair and I will get you ready for the big night. I can tell you the rib-eye sandwhiches hit the spot yesterday and it was nice walking around with my wife on our date. Oh don't forget to check out the cheesecake on a stick which is dipped in chocolate.