One Week Later We Get Ready for Another Big Show in the Sky!

It is great to be back. I loved my walks on the beach and having some wonderful home-cooked meals, but I did miss my bloggers, viewers, and just being able to do what I love and that is talking about our wonderful and wild Indiana weather on television. Today I have really enjoyed looking at tons of long-range models and I have also been organizing all those school supplies with my kids and getting them ready for their first day of school tomorrow. It is hard to believe it is back to school tomorrow. At least the kids have a fall-like pattern to get them in the school spirit and no severe weather to worry about!

Last Monday night we were ravaged with flooding rain, a tornado, and plenty of lightning. My plane flew right into that vicious storm front on my way home last week and it was amazing watching more than one lightning flash per second for the last hour of our flight. Luckily, I had a window seat and sat on the side of the plane facing west where you could really see those huge flashes clearly. Yes, I tried to stay quiet about it so I would not panic anybody on the plane. My heart started racing when I thought about this being the same front that dropped a tornado in Benton County. While I love to fly, I do admit I was a little nervous when I saw this huge wall of towering black clouds snuff out the stars along with vivid lightning. I said a prayer, wiped my clammy hands and warned the girls to put up their trays and finish their drinks quickly before the captain put the seatbelt sign back on. Abbey of course knew exactly what was going on because she checked the radar in the Atlanta airport. The good news is she fell asleep before the worst of the turbulence hit. We did not bounce around too much as the worst of the weather stayed to our west. We landed and I felt like I had a new lease on life and thanked the captain as I got off the plane. My advice to parents is to take the midnight flight home. The kids are tired and you even save some money. I was shocked that the Indianapolis Airport was full of people at 1 a.m. It might as well have been 1 p.m. because it was very busy.

One week later we can look forward to another big show in the sky. This time it is in the form of a major meteor shower. That is right look to the east-northeast tonight after 9 p.m. for the Perseid meteor shower. It is one of the bigger shooting star events of the entire year with 1 to 2 shooting stars possible per minute. The peak viewing will be after midnight tonight to just before dawn. Specks of comet dust will be hitting the earth's atmosphere at over 130,000 mph creating a beautiful display. The Perseid meteor shower is also known for its earthgrazers. These are slow-moving colorful shooting stars the seem to skip across the horizon and many times they look like they will reach the ground. The best viewing for this phenomenon will be just after sunset or between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m.

This is just the beginning of a very eventful week nature will put on in the sky. We also have the moon and planets lining up close together, a few planets chasing each other in the sky, and a lunar eclipse. I will have all the details here on the blog by this evening and the good news is I will tell you about a nice tranquil weather pattern so we can look to the heavens, sit back, and just enjoy. I will see you soon.