Cut Off Lows, Omega Highs and Rookery's

Anyone that drives between Madison and Columbus on 151 stay tuned and alert when driving near the Diesel Truck Driving School.

What I thought was just a coincidence is now a phenomenon . . . or something (that sounded good).

Several times in the past few years I have seen a Bald Eagle flying near that little woods area and last year a Great Blue Heron almost hit my car flying low in the same area.

WELL, through the beauty of Facebook I entered a conversation when another friend casually mentioned the same things.  What I find out and can now confirm after my ride in to Madison today was their is a huge rookery* near the top of the trees in the woods between the south and northbound lanes (doesn't that sound weird?  north and southbound lanes sounds better).    

*Rookery is a colony of breeding animals, generally birds.

I would estimate maybe a dozen LARGE Great Blue Heron nests way up in the trees.  They will be invisible once the leaves come out but now they look really awesome.
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As we all know weather comes in many flavors and this one, if you take the miserable weather us humans are going through, is really very interesting and unique.

We are experiencing a Closed Low which has become a Cut Off Low and it is combined with an Omega Block pattern.

This is a typical LOW that we see in America, not a strong one but it produces rain and icky weather

Open lows move fast across the U.S.


But when a low pressure area becomes large, vibrant and strong they tend to slow down and are called Closed Lows such as the one from last May that we experienced.

Closed lows move slowly, plodding along gaining energy as they suck up moister but still move west to east because they are linked to the normal westerly flow of air masses.

BUT - when that low pressure becomes disassociated with normal air masses they are called cut off lows which mean an extended period of wet, cool, and stormy weather.  This is what is happening now.

BUT WAIT - let us complicate things even more.  We have something called

  AN OMEGA BLOCK .  (insert echo).

An upper level, warm, high pressure area north of the jet stream which is very stable and block all movement eastward of any weather patterns trying to cross the country.  So we have a large, slow moving low being blocked by a persistent wall of high pressure and this is totally dominating the U.S.

Look how crazy big this low pressure is.

 This is what it looked like SUNDAY!

Luckily by Friday the low will open up and we should have a sun break Saturday . . . maybe.

Since last Tuesday Columbus has had 2.13 inches of rain with 1.05 last night.  It's rained 5 of the last 7 days and today and tomorrow we should be a lot more rain. 
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Brewers - wow - any game the Crew can win against the Cards is a gift.  with Braun, Segura and now Ramirez all not starting OR finishing the game last night a win was delicious. Strong pitching once again and fielding has been GREAT this year.  

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I'm considering starting a new Melotte/Council blog so I can separate my irreverence and contempt for all things I don't agree with I should have a blog where I can think and act like an adult (which I actually do do) (HA - I said do do).   Plus being called a "Leftists blog" by someone that voted for removing Walker is just confusing me.

I met for about 90 minutes with Edie at the new Columbus American National Bank. This is a place I want to send entrepreneurs and I believe this is a REALLY nice addition to Columbus.  I'm not a big advocate to banking, not anti-bank but not pro-bank.  Something I really don't think that much about but these guys got it together and they understand that it's all about building a better community and how can we get there (better websites for Chamber AND the City would be a HUGE start - they are both embarrassing). 

If you are a business or an agribusiness looking to increase your knowledge, go talk to them. Seriously.  They certainly know things that Summit did not know when Summit dropped the ball and we took all of our funds out after 20 years being a customer.

nuff said.

OH - I'm not even going to comment on what is going on with The LA Clippers.

Rod