.jpg)
May should cool down a touch but may remain dry
When I joined Facebook a number of years ago, I put my birthday down as January 1st. Why give identity thieves extra ammo to use against me? The only downside to this is that I get a couple of hundred birthday messages every New Year’s Day. My real birthday is sometime in May.
On my seventh or eighth birthday, Ed Marsolek Jr., gave me a real pocketknife as a gift. We spent the following summer honing our whittling skills in the woods behind Ed Enquist’s house on Camp Street. We got pretty adept at honing dull sticks into sharpened sticks.
I think the long range forecasters need to hone their skills a little better. For a while, they’ve been telling us that El Nino will fade and temperatures will turn closer to normal. Here’s how 2024 has played out so far: January was 5.9 degrees warmer than normal. February was a whopping 11.9 degrees over. March fell a great amount but was still warmer than normal by 3.4 degrees. El Nino loosened its grip in April according to the experts but it was still more than three degrees above the standard.
The long-range experts and oceanographers still think La Nina will take over for El Nino very soon. That’s going to mean a summer close to normal for temperature and precip here in the middle of the U.S. It will, however, lead to warm spells for the northeastern U.S. and desert southwest.
Around here, the month of May should follow La Nina’s lead and become two degrees cooler than normal. Rain, unfortunately, will be about an inch below normal. That’s a big deal because normal is only around three inches. Fire danger problems may linger this month.
Forecast trends include these for May: the first to fourth should be showery and mild, the fifth to ninth will be sunny and cool, the 10th to 16th could be rainy and cool, the 17th to 20th will be showery and cool, the 21st to 23rd will open up a window for warm and stormy weather and the rest of the month will go back to showery and cool. So, despite several rain chances, precip totals delivered by most systems will be sparse.
I hope the weather will be nice on Saturday, May 18. I hope you’ll consider attending the dual memorial service for my parents, Terry and Sharon Anderson. It’ll be at Grace Lutheran Church on Conan Street. Visitation starts at 11 a.m. and the service hits at noon. As I’ve mentioned before, my dad never forgot a single one of his students or any of his lawnmower customers. Mom was proud her artwork about Ely could be found many places around Ely even to this day.
