Posted by: @lamp-lighter

I guess in Australia, you go southward for cooler weather? Funny, how odd that sounds to me.

Yep. And if you think that's odd, spare a thought for how strangely disorientated I felt when I first moved to the northern hemisphere — I was living near London, and I kept finding when I came up from the Underground, I'd head along roads in the opposite direction to where I was intending to go and would find myself in the wrong place and have to double back, even though I had a map and I normally have a good sense of direction. Finally I realised what it was. I was instinctively navigating by the position of the sun — I'd never previously realised how much I do that — and now the sun was in the southern half of the sky, instead of in the northern half where it had been all my life before!!!

Oh yes, and the other strange thing over this side of the world is that the moon is upside down and it waxes and wanes backwards, from right to left instead of left to right as it should. It still never quite looks right to me. I know the stars are different here too, but the night skies in Britain are usually so cloudy that I really can't tell.  

Posted by: @jo

How is the weather in your corners of the world, @waggawerewolf27 and @Pete? I hope not extreme, one way or the other (flooding or drought).

Winter is certainly here now!  We've had several frosts and several evenings dropping below zero degrees.  As I write this message, we're expecting -1 degrees C tonight and there's another frost warning.  No doubt I'll be pouring some cold water on the car before I go to work on Saturday morning.  We've had a bit of rain over the last few weekends - not enough to say that the drought has been broken, but definitely enough to be relief from the drought - the landscape around my area is looking lovely and green again too!  Looking at the forecast for early-mid next week it looks like some more rain is expected too.  Hallelujah!  And no, it's not been extreme rain, just nice bits of soaking rain, easing into it.

I know my kids would love for it to snow where we live, I don't know how likely that is to be honest - it hasn't snowed here in the nearly 8 years that I've lived here, but Ballarat (about an hour and a half from where I live) sometimes has been known to have snow flurries.

Northern hemispherer here. The farthest south I've been is Acapulco, Mexico at 16' and I remember feeling really confused at how the moon looked so different. At its thinnest phase, when it set. it looked like a smile sitting on the horizon.

Happy solstice! At 03.42 UTC June 21 (21.42 this evening my time) the sun is as far north as it ever gets and begins its 6-month journey south. It's the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

This weekend will bring the warmest weather here in almost 2 years, with highs reaching a record 98F/37C and heat index values up to 113F/45C.

Posted by: @courtenay

And if you think that's odd, spare a thought for how strangely disorientated I felt when I first moved to the northern hemisphere...I'd head along roads in the opposite direction to where I was intending to go and would find myself in the wrong place and have to double back, even though I had a map and I normally have a good sense of direction. Finally I realised what it was. I was instinctively navigating by the position of the sun — I'd never previously realised how much I do that — and now the sun was in the southern half of the sky, instead of in the northern half where it had been all my life before!!!

I know exactly what you mean, and fully expect that to happen to me (in reverse) should I ever be lucky enough to travel Down Under. My sense of direction is strongly based on the position of sun or moon.  Not to mention seeing old favorites like Orion "upside down" or the moon waxing and waning opposite to what I am familiar with.

Well, 15 degrees Celsius is cold. 

Sounds ideal to me, especially with our incoming heat. Though I imagine people from warm climates would be amused by our excessive heat warnings for temperatures they deal with much of the year. (We tend toward the cooler weather; in an average year we spend more nights below 0F/-18C than days above 90F/32C).

Posted by @stargazer:

@jo, it sounds like you will be getting our weekend weather. Near-record heat and high humidity are coming Saturday and Sunday. The low Saturday night may set a record for the highest low temperature for the date: 80F/27C. For comparison, the average high right now is 80F/27C, and it may not even get below that at night. Whew!

Cooler weather is on tap for next week.

Yep, the next four days are going to be nasty-plus, weather-wise. Then things become more seasonal again, and more manageable—in the mid 20s C rather than mid 30s, with the humidex in the mid 40s.

Posted by @fantasia:

Actually not complaining about this at all because this entire area needs to dry out. Kansans (and probably neighboring states as well) need to harvest their wheat.

I sure hope that wheat harvesting can happen in a timely manner!

Posted by @Pete:

I know my kids would love for it to snow where we live, I don't know how likely that is to be honest -

I really hope they can experience a lovely, deep snowfall sometime. Not only is it pristinely beautiful, it is so much fun to play in!

I've lost track, but someone wrote, "15 degrees C is cold". It, understandably, depends what you're used to. That is a very comfortable temperature for us here. Some of our best weather is when it is in the mid-teens. But I respect a person from a warmer clime may feel this as cooler. 

Posted by stargazer:

Happy solstice! At 03.42 UTC June 21 (21.42 this evening my time) the sun is as far north as it ever gets and begins its 6-month journey south. It's the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Indeed! And at 22:42 tonight, local time, summer officially begins. This hot summer time of year is the most challenging for me, so I am only eager because our longest day of the year is nearly over, and now I can look forward to the days gradually shortening again , although this is not really noticeable until the beginning of August. Bring it on!  

@pete  I know my kids would love for it to snow where we live,I don't know how likely that is to be honest - it hasn't snowed here in the nearly 8 years that I've lived here, but Ballarat (about an hour and a half from where I live) sometimes has been known to have snow flurries.

According to Wikipedia, which I linked to, it is supposed to snow about twice a year in Ballarat, though as in NSW, up in the Blue Mountains, it seldom lasts long, whilst it definitely snows at Perisher, Bright, Thredbo etc, in the Snowy Mountains, at least twice already this year. At the moment, down the line at Penrith, it is quite cold and icily windy, especially yesterday when we did have an almost cyclonic - type bomb, as you mentioned in "use this word". At least, the storm system was spinning. And it brought down a tree on the railway at Kingswood, which along with many blackouts across Sydney, certainly messed up everyone's day.  

We have had sleet sometimes, in Penrith, back in the 1980's, as I recall, when even the maximum temperature that wintery day was about 10 degrees Celsius or less. It snows quite often at Katoomba, Mt Victoria, & Blackheath, not to mention at Orange & Bathurst, inland.  though the last time Sydney recorded snowfall was on June 28th in 1836 when the temperature then in Sydney, itself, was 3 degrees Celsius (38 degrees Fahrenheit). But Sydney also has a coastal climate, like Melbourne, though it can get quite cold along Bass Strait. One year it even snowed at Christmas but at Falls Creek in Victoria. And when Ballarat is one of the Victorian towns on the Great Dividing Range, a cordillera, the 5th longest in the world, it is part of the same mountainous system as the Blue Mountains and further north to Armidale & in Southern Qld, it is likely to snow there, once or twice, every now and then. 🥶🥶

Chances are, this weather system might even reach you, when it is said to be heading south, though it could simply head out to sea, instead. 

Kind of fun to think about snow while we're in the heat of summer here. 🙂 We have a few days of 90F/32C or above on tap, with nature likely providing some fireworks of its own on July 4.

The earth is at aphelion (farthest from the sun) July 3 at 19:54 UTC July 3.

The mosquitoes have arrived with a vengeance; after a few years of light population counts due to drought, I was worried about needing a blood transfusion after spending some time outdoors last evening.

But earlier this week I did see something quite unusual for where I live: several fireflies. I saw them a lot growing up in rural southern Minnesota, but here in the city they are a rare thing indeed.

@courtenay I was really puzzled in my first teaching job in London, when I was waiting for the sun to move out of the class's eyes and it didn't, in fact it went the other way!  My previous visits had been in autumn to winter, and there'd been no reason to worry which way the sun was going.

@waggawerewolf27 I'm not sure whether we are going to get any effects of the cyclonic bomb or not, however, I do see on the 7 day weather forecast prediction of rain over the weekend and into early next week.  Hopefully it is more substantial rain - a good soaking (without the flooding) would be lovely!  The snow would still be nice too!

@stargazer Kind of fun to think about snow while we're in the heat of summer here. 🙂 We have a few days of 90F/32C or above on tap, with nature likely providing some fireworks of its own on July 4. 

Yes, a storm would relieve the heat somewhat, besides lightning making a wilder light show than just using lasers. Actually, thinking about snow in hot weather, is why the picture on my calendar for January, the middle month of summer, here, happens to be of penguins wandering around atop an Antarctic iceberg. The one for December is a French château, at Chenonceau, but although the rest are from every continent, Australia misses out.   How dare they!

@pete  Do let us know how you get on for the next week with any rain. It would be nice if a second bout of rain finally broke your drought for now. If you are in a mountainous region, you are unlikely to be flooded out. 

This weekend brings a brief respite from the heat and sporadic rain of summer, as a cold front came in from Canada. It also means a return of the Canadian wildfire smoke, which has been absent here much of the time so far (since the winds have tended to be southerly). The milky haze and aroma of smoke were strong yesterday, but south winds and heat return tomorrow (Monday). The extent and size of those fires is astounding. We could almost wish for some snow to put them out!

Still, I enjoyed a quintessential Minnesota day yesterday: a visit to a friend's lakeshore cabin, a campfire with lots of grilled food, and a pontoon trip out on the lake where we saw other boaters and loons on the water.

Some large parts of NZ had heavy rain again in the last few days, with damage to land, buildings, businesses, and morale. It's not long since this happened before. 

My area escaped it, and I'm grateful. In fact we had some mild weather, rather like spring. We want winter to run its course though, and then spring in September. 

Posted by @stargazer:

Kind of fun to think about snow while we're in the heat of summer here. ...

But earlier this week I did see something quite unusual for where I live: several fireflies. I saw them a lot growing up in rural southern Minnesota, but here in the city they are a rare thing indeed.

It sure is fun and pleasant to think about snow now in the middle of our heat wave! How I long for Autumn and Winter! But about fireflies, we see them here every evening on our property. Abundant lights dancing around. They look magical. The past week, in particular, has been beautiful just after dark as dozens of fireflies start weaving their way around the trees, and amongst the corn field behind us, continually flickering on and off. 

Posted by@ waggawerewolf27:

Actually, thinking about snow in hot weather, is why the picture on my calendar for January, the middle month of summer, here, happens to be of penguins wandering around atop an Antarctic iceberg.

Haha! That calendar was surely made with the northern hemisphere in mind.  

Posted by @Pete:

Hopefully it is more substantial rain

I hope so! Have you received more to give your area relief from the drought?

Are you getting some relief from all the rain, coracle?

I have to go back a bit to Monday, June 23, when Toronto recorded its hottest temperature on this date in nearly a decade. Apparently, it was warmer in Ontario than in Texas! That kind of extreme heat in June is far from normal for us. Below is a chart I found on Instant Weather Ontario for that record. Fyi, 36°C is 96.8F, and the humidity was far above that.

**CHART LINK WAS BROKEN, so I removed it**

In the opposite vein, I heard that our lowest temperature today, July 15, was back in 1967 (Canada's Centennial year), when June 23rd only reached 6°C / 42.8F. Would love that now, that is for sure! 'Though that is unusually cool for June here. 

Currently we are in the middle of another heat wave, this one nearly a week long. Thankfully we are coming to the end of it on Thursday night, so just two more days, as thunderstorms descend, bringing with them a much more comfy air mass, hurrah!

The air quality has been poor, as well, with the smoke from the wild fires. How I feel for people with respiratory problems! 

My worst month of the year, July (mid-summer = our hottest, most humid, and often driest) is halfway over, so ... here's to August and tastes of coming Autumn. 

Thankfully we have had reasonable amounts of rain, so all the gardens and farmers' fields are thriving.  

Posted by @stargazer:

Still, I enjoyed a quintessential Minnesota day yesterday: a visit to a friend's lakeshore cabin, a campfire with lots of grilled food, and a pontoon trip out on the lake where we saw other boaters and loons on the water.

This sounds absolutely wonderful! How were the mosquitoes?

I love the call of the loon. For one of my university projects, I had to compose a musical piece based on the loon's haunting call. Unfortunately, I cannot find a copy of it anywhere now. Writing this sure was a challenge, and great fun too. I do not even recall the mark I received for the composition (many years ago).  

Posted by: @jo

 

I have to go back a bit to Monday, June 23, when Toronto recorded its hottest temperature on this date in nearly a decade. Apparently, it was warmer in Ontario than in Texas! That kind of extreme heat in June is far from normal for us. Below is a chart I found on Instant Weather Ontario for that record. Fyi, 36°C is 96.8F, and the humidity was far above that.

Now that's a slightly hotter heatwave than the "heatwave" we just had here in the UK, which I only found vaguely hottish. (It helps that my home is a ground floor flat that doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight, so it never gets too hot indoors.) I mean, coming from Australia, I could tell people about REAL heatwaves, but for some reason they don't want to know...    

Posted by: @jo

This sounds absolutely wonderful! How were the mosquitoes?

There was a pretty stiff breeze off the lake that kept them at bay.

We had summer heat (for us) earlier this week, with highs around 35C/95F and heat indices around 98F/37C.

But winter is never far off in these parts. The small town of Hog Creek (I'd never heard of it!) in northeast Minnesota had a low temperature of 38F/3C this morning, and even here in the city we tied a record low for the date, 52F/11C.

Today is a glorious day, crisp and clear except for a few clouds. But the heat will return in a few days.