Stormy Wednesday

It looks like today will be an indoor day! About ten minutes into the kids' swimming lessons, thunder started rumbling in the distance and they cleared the pool. The kids went into the locker room to learn about life jackets and safety. About ten minutes after that, the ominous black clouds rolled in and it started raining great big rain drops. I thought I was being clever and had parked Beeb and myself under one of the big umbrellas. Turns out that the big umbrellas block sun, but rain? Not so much so. All they did was turn each big raindrop into several dozen wee sprinkly raindrops, so we got wet more uniformly than the people out in the open. Shortly thereafter, the rain decided to get serious, so Beeb and I made a dash for the locker room, too. Then the sky completely opened up. When Bean asked why I had joined them, I told her it was because it was raining cats and dogs and toads and frogs and crickets and anteaters. No sheep. I checked pretty carefully. Or alpacas. There was some hail though. We waited out the worst of it before making a break for the car and home.

What? Swimming lessons, you say? Why yes, Bug and Bean are both enrolled in their first sessions of swim lessons. Bug is enrolled in the big kids' Level 1 lessons and Bean is in the preschool class. They both love their teachers and announced after the first lesson that they were both going to teach swim lessons when they were big enough. Bean has a "boy teacher," who is a typical pool lifeguard aged dude. Watching him get silly with the little preschool girls is totally worth the price of admission. Beeb and I could have enrolled in parent-child lessons, but I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have gotten anything out of it that we aren't already getting in the apartment complex pool for free, so we didn't. Besides, when it isn't raining buckets, I can make progress on the Kitty Man socks.

Beeb has finally figured out how to sit down from a supported standing position, much to my relief. Relief, not because I was worried about him reaching a milestone or not, but because he would get tired of standing and start shrieking to get down. Incidentally, he has discovered, much to his delight, that he can make an ear-splitting screech and delights in reproducing it. I don't know which will be first, Mr. Yowley McScreecherson outgrowing this phase or Mama going deaf. I know that this too shall pass as Miss Bean went through the same thing, but man, my poor ears. Plus it makes me a bit self-conscious in public as it sounds like he's being tortured when he lets loose. He's not. He's just exercising his vocal cords...probably be a dramatic tenor some day, but meanwhile, you should see people's heads whip around to see what the insane lady is doing to the poor child.

And finally, a gratuitous I Can Haz Cheezebabies...

...that is just wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to start. Yes, he fell asleep on the floor in the doorway to the bedroom. Yes, that's a rubber chicken in his mouth. Yes, it's a squeaky dog toy. In my defense, Kitty Daddy was watching him while I was in the shower (I hopped out and had him fetch the camera so I could take the picture) and the dog toy actually belongs to Bean, not the dog. When she was a toddler, she fell in love with Cheepy Chicky at Target, so we used him as bribery to make the trip go smoother. It is a cute picture, though.

Flooding, KIPping and Gardening

It turned out I wasn't too far from the truth when I wondered if Iowa would become a series of islands after our trip there. Since returning from Iowa, over 400 blocks of Cedar Rapids was flooded and Iowa City has experienced worse flooding than the devastating summer of 1993. Although there is much more flooding state-wide, I have been following the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City news flooding closely. Before moving to Wisconsin, I had lived in Iowa City for about 15 years, including 1993. The flooding that summer was more water than I could have ever imagined (and I am known to have a pretty active imagination), so it just boggles the mind that they have even more water rushing through there right now. Wisconsin has been pretty wet, too, but we are high and dry, though the surrounding areas have certainly had their fair share. Lake Delton, which used to be about an hour north of here, decided to go live in the Gulf of Mexico, taking a fair share of the local landscape along for the ride.

Saturday was Worldwide Knit in Public day, so Beeb and I joined the crew at The Sow's Ear to do our part. Daddy, Bug, and Bean went west to visit with Grandpa for the day, but Beeb and I settled in to knit in the glorious weather. Considering all the gray and overcast we have been having, the sunshine and pleasant temps were most welcome. As was the pleasant company...I enjoyed chatting with Last Saturday knitters MollyBee, Dale-Harriet, and Linda, among others. Even the thunderstorm and hail that passed through late afternoon couldn't ruin the day. We just ran inside and kept knitting. Beeb found a toy house out on the lawn where we were knitting and practiced doing dishes. I'm thinking that if the Sow's Ear hired him on as a dishwasher, I might get a yarn discount. Right??? Or would that be exploitation?

Today, we took advantage of more nice weather for a little gardening. I am loosely participating in Norma's Gardenalong (if you understand "loosely participating" as not following any of the rules or suggestions, but hoping that reading her blog will remind me to water our "garden". I am very much a survival-of-the-fittest kind of gardener.) Anyhoo, today we finally repotted out *cough*extremelyrootbound*cough* apple trees and our Sun Gold tomato plant that we got with last week's CSA box.


The tomato plant has been named (by Bug) "Hin" (Full name is Hin Tin Plant) on the ride home from the farm. Since I was so excited to dig into our produce, I didn't get any pictures, but we ran into Denise picking up her box at the same farm, so if you want to see what we got, you can check out her picture. We have already eaten our swiss chard, radishes, lettuce, green onions, and half of the cucumber. The beet greens, radish greens, and some of the spinach are going into soup tonight and the rest of the spinach and onion will become spanakopita later in the week and the turnips will be the veggie with another meal. YUM, YUM, YUM. It has all been delicious so far!

It's Official...A Very Soggy Summer!

Courtesy of the National Weather Service...

Public Information Statement

Statement as of 2:18 PM CDT on September 10, 2007

... August 2007 was the wettest August on record for Madison...
... August 2007 was the wettest calendar month ever for Madison...
... Meteorological Summer 2007 was the wettest Summer ever for
Madison...

For the month of August 2007... 15.18 inches of rain fell at Truax
field in Madison. This smashed the previous record rainfall for
August... which was 9.49 inches... set back in 1980.

The 15.18 inches for August 2007 also smashed the record for the
wettest calendar month ever in Madison... which was 10.93
inches... set back in July 1950.

The 22.69 inches that fell during meteorological Summer of
2007... the months of June... July... and August... was also the wettest
ever in Madison. The previous wettest meteorological Summer in
Madison was 21.58 inches... set back in 1993.

Below is the list of the top 5 wettest calendar months in Madison...

1... 15.18 inches... **aug 2007**
2... 10.93 inches... Jul 1950
3... 10.84 inches... may 2004
4... 10.69 inches... Sep 1915
5... 10.34 inches... Sep 1941

Below is the list of the top 10 wettest meteorological Summers in
Madison...

1... 22.69 inches... **2007**
2... 21.58 inches... 1993
3... 21.21 inches... 1880
4... 19.86 inches... 1950
5... 19.20 inches... 1883
6... 18.82 inches... 1885
7... 18.30 inches... 1884
8... 17.29 inches... 1882
9... 16.86 inches... 1981
10... 16.41 inches... 1952

Weather records have been kept in Madison since 1871.

The one little irony here that I would like to point out is that during the wettest meteorological summer of record, we spent a good chunk of the summer in official drought conditions, while the second wettest meteorological summer was in 1993 when the entire upper Midwest was under water.

Gettin' my geek on

I'm sure the general sogginess of southeast Minnesota and south central Wisconsin is news to no one by now. But I have to get my geek on and revel in the hydrology for a moment. Although there is one day left in August, the forecast is for no rain for a change, so I will go out on a limb and assume that things won't change today or tomorrow. First up, daily precipitation for the month:

I would like to point out that prior to August 4th, we were having drought conditions...dead lawns, watering restrictions, the works. Since then we have had rain almost every day (about half the days that look like zero on the chart actually showed a trace of precip). And may I point out that 1/2-inch of rain is a decent amount (ten days of the month if you include the 27th with 0.48 in) and three of those days over a half an inch set record daily rainfall amounts (3.39", 2.13", and 3.20" on the 18th, 19th, and 22nd, respectively).

So what do a lot of wet days add up to? A VERY soggy month:

The line shows the cumulative rainfall to date for each day of the month and the blue arrows highlight some interesting monthly totals for the Madison airport. From top to bottom, they are

• Average monthly rainfall for August = 4.33 in
• Record monthly rainfall for August = 9.49 in (set in 1980)
• Record monthly rainfall for any month = 10.93 in (set in July1950 and based on over 100 years of data)
• Total for August 2007 = 14.88 in
  

Fortunately, our apartment is located where flooding hasn't been a problem, though there have certainly been some impressive flooding in our county and in the surrounding areas. Our problems have been limited to too much indoor time since everything has been staying wet all the time and a bumper crop of mosquitoes. Fortunately, today is lovely and the forecast for the next few days is sunny and clear, so the mud may dry up and we might get a little outdoor time if the skeeters don't eat us alive!

We will return to our regularly scheduled kids and knitting content shortly...mostly depending on little brother's plans (we are officially at the "could be any time now" stage) and my general crankiness/will-to-live level (see "could be any time now").

Pictures

Yeah, yeah...I never did get around to posting any vacation pictures, but my dad has been working on editing and putting them together into a slide show right now. He sent this one to me and I just HAD to post it...

It is Bug playing with an interactive water display at the A.C. Gilbert Children's museum in Salem, OR and the group just captures Bug at four so well...intense, serious, curious, engaged, and, well, goofy as a loon and always making me chuckle. He is so like this whenever he plays...he takes the "work" of childhood very seriously...not that he doesn't have a lot of fun in the process, too.

Next up is birthday fluff. Kitty Daddy and the kids got me a gift certificate to the LYS near where KD works, so I combined some birthday money and went sock-happy. Some red, orange, and yellow socks with orange heels and toes. There should be enough of the heel and toe yarn left to make a pair of kid socks, too.

This is my other score, the color isn't great in the picture...it's more of a darker burgandy color, not nearly as bright purple as the picture shows. Since I have big feet (size 10!), 50 g socks tend to have fairly short cuffs, so I splurged on two 100 g skeins. That way I can have some socks that are a bit longer than anklets and probably get a pair of kid socks, too (can you say "fourth sock syndrome????)

Other than that we have been having rain, rain, and more rain. After being very dry...brown lawns, watering restrictions, and the whole nine yards...August has been just soggy. We are already past 10.25" for the month and both yesterday and the day before set records for precipitation amounts (2.13" and 3.39", respectively). The bright side is that things are much cooler, but the cool weather has come at a price of constant damp, a bumper crop of mosquitoes, near-constant flash-flood warnings, and an ever-increasing case of cabin fever.

And a couple of gratuitous kid pics. We have been looking through baby pictures in preparation for little brother's arrival. Here is Bug at one day with Daddy...

and Bean at three days old, tucked under Mama's arm...


ETA: Late Breaking news on the Rain front...I found this in a Special Weather Statement issued mid-afternoon on the 20th:

... Record August rainfall set in Madison...

Up through 1 PM CDT today... 10.50 inches of rain has fallen so far
in August at Truax field in Madison. This breaks the old record for
the month of August... which was 9.49 inches back in 1980.

10.50 inches also makes this the 4th wettest month ever in Madison.
Below is the list of heaviest calendar months in Madison history:

Jul 1950 10.93
may 2004 10.84
Sep 1915 10.69
Aug 2007 10.50 (so far)

Obviously, with 11 more days in the month and a wet pattern... it is
possible that August 2007 will become the wettest month ever in
Madison WI history.

From noon CDT Saturday August 18th to noon CDT Sunday August 19th
5.00 inches fell... which is the 3rd highest rainfall recorded in any
24 hour period at Madison.

In addition... records suggest that August 18th and 19th... with 5.52
inches of rain measured... was the 2nd wettest two day period in
Madison history. The wettest 2 day period is 5.79 inches set on may
31st and June 1st 2000.

Dude, the hydrologist in me is digging this...the tired, pregnant lady with the stir-crazy kids, not so much so.

Nope. Don't wanna talk about it.

Took the picture five minutes ago, in case you were wondering...