Indy Flood Update...

I've posted plenty of pictures from the sculpture gardens that surround the Indianapolis Arts Center, including photos of my favorite one, Twisted House, by John McNaughton.

Here's a photo of my friend Dave standing in front of it for scale:

I saw a photo of it in the news yesterday afternoon...

Here Comes the Flood

We're fine here in SoBro, but the White River's gonna crest here in north Marion county early this afternoon.

Ravenswood is gonna flood, but Ravenswood floods all the time. They're closing the gates in the flood wall here in Broad Ripple up on 67th Street. This is a novelty to me. I’ve been here close to twenty years now and this is the first time I remember the flood gates getting closed. We'll be fine (they're a bit more than a mile north of us) but the Arts Center is fixin' to get wet.

The big loser is going to be the quaint little neighborhood of Rocky Ripple. Nestled in between the White River and the canal, over by Butler University, it's surrounded by a levee built in 1937 after the historic flood of 1913.

The White River is gonna get higher than it did in 1913 and may overtop the levee by as much as a foot, which will wipe out the parts of the structure that are in poor shape. If that happens, bye-bye Rocky Ripple.

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Stupid Weather...

As you may have read elsewhere, we've been having some weather here this week.

Unfortunately, all this weather volatility has occurred during the first week of the Indiana State Fair.

Looking at the forecast, I think I'm just going to punt on the Fair this week and hope to get in some good visits Tuesday through Friday of next week.

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Sticky...

The center of this high pressure system was supposed to depart for parts east this evening, so as to cook New Yorkers and denizens of the MidAtlantic seaboard, but apparently it decided to linger in the midwest another day. So tomorrow is going to be a repeat of yesterday, mid nineties and sticky.

The break in the weather has been rolled back to Saturday, with more typical mid-80s returning early next week after a rainy weekend.

This morning's predawn perambulation was in 76℉ and 90% humidity. I wish that 90% humidity felt noticeably different to 95%, but alas it does not.

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Daily Low

The heat wave is definitely here.

Just before sunrise this morning it was 77℉ and 90% humidity and I'm afraid that's as good as it's going to get today.

I'm gonna try and dip over to the outdoor range just after nine, as soon as morning rush hour's over, to get my shooting in before it gets too swamp-ass hot out there to bother.

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Air You Can Wear

Went for my walk around the block this morning just minutes before local sunrise.

Air temperature was 74℉ and the dew point was also 74℉. In other words, the humidity was over 95%.

Rather sticky feeling.

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The Skies Catch Up

"Meteorological* spring" has been here for almost three weeks, but the equinox today marks the onset of real, actual spring. 

Boys and girls, we have officially survived another winter. Pat yourselves on the back for a job well done. We gotta take our W's where we find them.

*For simplicity and consistency, meteorologists divide the seasons by the calendar. Spring is Mar/Apr/May, summer is Jun/Jul/Aug, et cetera.

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Ugh.

Imagine me showing you a photo snapped out the window just now showing snow blowing around after yesterday afternoon’s sunny seventy degrees and captioning it “What fresh hell is this?”

That’ll save me the effort of walking over to the window.

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Danger Avocado

Someone referred to this Level 1/2/3 severe weather warning graphic as a "Danger Avocado" and now I can't unsee it.

Balmy, then Not So

78℉ on Friday and 75℉ yesterday, both record highs, so it's been an unseasonably early and balmy spring. On the other hand, the front moving this way from the west heralds a cold front and we'll be back below freezing come Monday, they say.

Ow, my gimpy leg.

Tab Clearing...

• An app that warns you when it thinks smart glasses are nearby.


• When you're finally over the effin' snow.


• Jim Grey encounters enshittification.

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Better Days

After that brutal cold snap, this warm spell is welcome.

The average high here in Indianapolis on a mid-February day is 41℉ and here it is already 38 degrees and the sun's not even up yet. They're calling for a high of 58, some overnight rain, and then nearly seventy degrees and sunny tomorrow.

Outdoor range time!

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Brrr!

We’re stuck in an extended cold spell largely because of all snow to the south and west of us.

A couple days of southwesterly wind is what usually snaps us out of these, but wind out of TX/OK/AR is blowing across hundreds of miles of snow covered ground. Until they thaw, we aren’t going to get above freezing.

Depending on whose forecast you believe, it may be as late as next weekend before any of this starts to melt.

It snowed some...

Fresh Market had cleared their lot and the surrounding sidewalks as best as they could, but temps in the low single digits really reduce the effectiveness of brine pretreatment and salt applied post-plowing.

I'd say that probably 70-80% of people had made at least a good faith effort at clearing their walks. Pretty decent, considering the volume of snow. If you don't want to shovel walks, why pay extra to live in a neighborhood where walkability is one of the main attractions? "We live in a society" and all that.

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Tab Clearing...

• The Spinner from Blade Runner, from the fertile mind of Sid Mead...


• Saudi Arabia is scaling back on Neom, their weird project to build a linear megacity in the desert.


• It's cold, y'all.

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Big Dip

We'd had a string of unseasonably warm weather locally, culminating in a Sunday afternoon high temperature of 67°F, and then the front blew through.

It was quite the front, too. Booms of thunder, which is not typical late December weather for Indianapolis, and they even reported a tornado out in Linton, in Greene County.

After midnight the temperature had dropped below freezing and when the alarm went off here at Roseholme Cottage at 0600 on Monday morning it was down to 23°F, falling to 21°F by sunrise.

When I walked to lunch at 11 o'clock, it was only seventeen degrees out there, with a steady 20mph wind gusting to 35.

It's 14 now, with a light dusting of snow on the ground. I wish it would make up its mind.

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Balmy...

And we're back into the mid-50s for most of this week and could see the mid-60s on Friday, threatening records.

Next week will be more seasonable, though, with a long stretch of sub-freezing days.

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Over the Hump...

We made it, fellow SAD sufferers. It's the Solstice and the first day of astronomical winter. From here on out to Midsummer, the days just get longer and the nights shorter.

(This will be cold comfort for another month and a half or so before it really starts to get noticeable and the crocuses start peeping out of brown lawns.)

Cold Snap

We're off to an unusually snowy start to the winter in Indy, having already gotten over a foot, total, for the season. We also just had an unseasonable cold snap, too. Note that the two are not necessarily connected. It can be extremely cold and not snow, and it can snow rather a lot with a temp in the low thirties, which isn't particularly cold for winter in these parts.

The thing about these arctic dips is that the polar air mass is like Mother Earth's beret. When she pulls it down rakishly low on one side, that means it's hiked way up on the other.

The cold snap is past, though, and we're supposed to be back into the fifties on Thursday. They're calling for warmish weather all next week, too.

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What a difference a day makes...

When I checked the forecast in the middle of the week, today was predicted to be cold, with maybe a chance of freezing rain or even snow flurries.

Yesterday afternoon I looked at the same forecast and now there's a winter storm warning in effect, calling for 4-8" of accumulating snow.

Since it hasn't been above freezing for about a day and a half, whatever falls is going to stick.

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