Weather Weirdness

It seems like this year the midwest has been experiencing way more intense weather than is usual... and summer isn't even half over. Right now we have the floods in Iowa, floods in southern Minnesota, floods in Wisconsin, and floods everywhere in between. Then there have been the intense tornadoes that have ripped through the midwest, and other parts of the US as well. Also, it seems like it's been a never ending stream of thunderstorms trucking through the area. Just about every phone call I have with my parents will contain a portion of conversation catching up on what crazy weather they just had or how nasty of a storm came through my neighborhood. It's truly nuts.

And the latest entry into this crazy weather fiasco that is this summer, the northeast Minneapolis area (where I live) had a powerful thunderstorm rip through the area on Saturday night, complete with a light show and 60 mph+ winds. What was more amazing than the winds was how the air changed from being sunny and mid 70's in the afternoon to cool and densely black. I could have sworn that there was some demonic force making its way into Minneapolis and sucking the light and heat from the air.

Once the storm had trucked on through, our neighborhood surveyed the damage, which included a host of downed trees. Thankfully that's all that happened. I didn't have a tree go down, but did have a big ol' chunk of one snap off and land next to the house. This led to some Sunday afternoon chores I hadn't anticipated... like sawing it all up... by hand... with a hacksaw that probably wasn't too sharp. It was a good workout, though, and I got to spend time out in the sun.

Thinking that I could relax at the day's end, I started up a bonfire in the back yard, hoping to make some s'mores, but not more than 10 minutes after I got the fire started, a cloud opened up and poured down on us for all of 15 minutes, but it was enough to put out the fire and saturate the wood. Seriously, this weather is crazy and maybe just a little bit mean...