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I haven't had any trouble before. I grew up in Chicago, have lived and died with the Cubs, and try to make at least one trip a year to the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field. I couldn't stop being a Cubs fan if I wanted to. It's in my DNA. I can't tell you how many times, beginning in 1969, that my World Series hopes have been dashed with the Cubs.
Continue reading "Who Do I Cheer For? (Or Do I Just Take the Series Off)" »
Just a follow-up to the blog I wrote after the helicopter accident last month. First, and foremost, I want to thank everyone who wrote, emailed and said hi when you saw me at the ballgame or the mall. We all tried to get back to everyone, but we were in the middle of an email switchover, and I'm told some emails got lost in the shuffle.
I knew three of the men who died in the helicopter collision in Phoenix last Friday: Rick Krolak, Jim Cox and Scott Bowerbank. I've listed them in the order I met them. In different ways, they were all bright, positive lights in my life. I learned from them. I laughed with them. I was in awe of their different talents. And even though they were three very different men, they had one thing in common: passion.
We're having pretty typical weather for late June: hot and dry. And on a few of those days, we're seeing a few isolated thunderstorms in the mountains of eastern Arizona. To date, we haven't seen any real strong signals that our summer thunderstorm season, at least in the Valley, is anywhere close to starting.
It's time to re-define the Arizona monsoon, our summer thunderstorm season. It's time to set specific dates, on the calendar, which indicates the monsoon "season" has arrived and ended. It's time to forget about dew points and the endless debate over whether a storm "is or isn't" part of the monsoon. It's time for the definition to apply to the entire state. It's time to simplify.
Wasn't it cool to see Gordon win at Phoenix a couple of weeks ago? His team really seems to have an advantage with their COT (Car of Tomorrow) program. Heck, after never winning in Phoenix, Gordon may win the fall race at PIR, too.
Continue reading "Jeff Gordon Fans Unite.....behind Junior" »
So my son Taylor and me, after visiting two colleges in two days (Illinois and Georgia Tech) had a couple of hours before our flight home from Atlanta Tuesday afternoon. We decide to surprise our buddy Howie McCann, who runs a baseball training facility north of Atlanta, and visit him unannounced
In the last several months, the global warming issue has been in the news frequently. The message I've received is basically this: Global warming is real, it's more than 90 percent likely that the most recent, drastic warming is the result of mankind, and there are some things we can do about it.
Continue reading "Since when did saving become a bad thing?" »
The rain and snow which came to Arizona on Friday the 19th could be a sign the expected El Niño weather is about to return to Arizona.
For months, we've been talking about long range data which indicates we'll have wetter and warmer than normal conditions from late January through March. That would be a good thing for a whole bunch of reasons.
Yeah, I hear alot from Patti and Suzanne about all the stuff they cook. And we were bragging about our stuffing recipes before Thanksgiving, but I didn't have time to get my favorite, holiday dressing recipe posted. So here it is in time for our December holiday season: Chorizo/Cornbread Stuffing
Well, we all know it's been a warm month. In the past week, we've tied or set a couple of daily records in Phoenix and it seems like it just hasn't cooled off like we expect this time of year. Couple that with a siginificant drying trend, and it's been a bust of a weather month.
I like to think I'm a well-seasoned traveler. We have been on enough airplanes to have the routine down. Even when the TSA changes the rules, even with long lines, we just have a knack for dealing with it. Our worst experience was an 18-hour trip from Ft. Lauderdale to Phoenix, with stops in Cincinnati and Dallas that included the evacuation of a terminal. That we got home that night was just sort of amazing. But that wasn't a blunder. That was just a LONG day.
One of the most frequent question we get in the weather department is, "Why isn't my town/city on your map?" So I figured I'd try to set the record straight.
First of all, we want data from ALL cities around the Valley and ALL cities/towns around the state because it improves the weather picture we can paint. We want to put your community on our maps. However, we are limited by a couple of factors.
1. Local/live temperature/rainfall data: We use a combination of National Weather Service sites which report hourly and our own Forecast Net sites which report in real time to give you temperatures around the Valley and state. If your city isn't on our temperature map, we can't get the data. We're working hard on getting data from areas we currently miss, like Apache Junction and Maricopa.
2. Storm Tracker includes ALL Arizona cities and towns. That's right! Every city, town and unincorporated village is in the database. When we zoom into different areas, you see those different areas highlighted. And for most of the state, when we zoom close enough, we have street level mapping, so you'll actually see your block if we focus on your neighborhood. It's a super powerful, super-cool tool.
We invite you to continue to report weather to us at weather@azfamily.com and to send us storm pictures. That's yet another way we can make the weather as local as possible. Remember the Saturday last March in snowed like crazy in the north Valley? Literally hundreds of you sent us pictures and email reports on what the weather was doing in your neighborhood. As a result, we had the best coverage of the storm of any TV station by far! And it was all because of you. Keep it up!
So I'm driving in to work, chatting with Tony Haffer from the National Weather Service in Phoenix about whether they're going to "call" the monsoon over. We've had this conversation about twenty times, it seems, over the years and it's always the same. "You guys going to call the monsoon today?" I asked.
"Nah, probably not," Tony replied.
"But you and I know it's over," I said.
"Yeah, but you know," he answered. "There's the whole dewpoint thing and everyone wants us to follow that."
"Even though the flow pattern has changed," I added, referring to the fact that we're now under the influence of the westerly winds in the upper atmosphere, a definite end to the monsoon's southerly flow pattern. After a few minutes of conversation, Tony came up with an idea.
"Whaddaya say we get all the weather people together next year and agree to stop calling the monsoon "the monsoon?" Tony suggested.
"I'd vote for that," I replied, laughing along with him. "Let's just call it what it is...."
"The summer thunderstorm season," he said, finishing my thought.
"I think it's a monster we're never going to get rid of," I added. "Don't you think the term should be used in more of a supportive role for our summer thunderstorms, rather than the end-all, end-all."
"Agree!" Tony confirmed with glee.
"Let's put it on the ballot," I added. "Everything else is."
"Yeah, I like that," he said. "Proposition 600: Banning the use of the term "monsoon" in Arizona."
"There's grassroots support," I said.
"I'll have to look into that," Tony said laughing.
Monsoon 2006 is coming to an end. And Tony and I know that there's absolutely no chance there won't be a Monsoon 2007. But perhaps a few more folks won't mind when we call it, on occasion, our summer thunderstorm season.
