For the second time in a matter of days, Kansas is about to get a visit from the remnants of a tropical storm —- but we’ll barely notice.
National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Bowman said the remnants of Tropical Storm Edouard will be so broken up by the time they reach Kansas late this week we’ll only see an increase in moisture available for a front to tap into.
When what was left of Hurricane Dolly moved toward the Great Plains last week, Bowman said, “there was a well-defined area of low pressure.” Edouard won’t even offer that.
Dolly brought .60 of an inch of rain over three days in late July to Wichita, adding to what has the potential to be one of the wettest years in the city’s history.
The wind is such a constant in Kansas we probably notice it most on those rare days when it’s not blowing. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we probably complain about the wind a lot - especially on those gray November and December days when it seems like a harsh north wind cuts right through to our bones.
But as I was working out at the family farm last week on one of those cloudless July days when the heat and humidity seemed to want to cook you from the inside out, I reflected on all those scorching summer days spent working in the fields when we would pause for a moment, grateful for a gust of south wind to take the edge off the heat.
Those breezes could make long afternoons on a swather or a tractor bearable (we didn’t have cabs on most of our field equipment), and moving irrigation pipe without a bit of wind could leave us feeling like we were toiling in a sauna.
I guess that’s why I cut the wind some slack during the late spring and summer. I imagine roofers, landscapers and construction workers, among others, can relate to my sentiments.
That may seem like a largely trivial question to most folks most of the time.
But it’s vital to ranchers trying to burn prairie grass in the spring, or farmers looking to burn field stubble after the crop has been harvested. It can even make a difference in events as seemingly inconsequential as a fireworks display, as I was reminded Friday night in Larned.
I was out at the family farm for one of our periodic “work weeks” when more than a dozen of us headed into town for the July 4th fireworks. We reached the park on the north edge of town and settled onto blankets and lawn chairs with our snow cones and bottles of water. The sun set beneath a cloudless sky and the light southeasterly wind took the edge off of what been a hot day.
The fireworks began illuminating the sky —- and the breeze carried the ashes and remnants of the shells right into the crowd. I found myself wishing I’d brought an umbrella. Fragments landed in my hair, next to my left eye, in my niece’s snow-cone cup and on bare arms and legs. They were not hot, thankfully, but it gave the festivities a gritty edge.
If the wind had been out of the south or southwest, the crowd would not have been given the unexpected shower. But we went home with some surprise souvenirs. A couple of my nieces went home thrilled with their keepsakes. Me? I’m thinking of buying some goggles for future fireworks displays to protect my eyes after that near miss.
I did a double-take after reading this sentence in a Dallas Morning News story about Monday night’s baseball game between the Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians in Arlington:
“Mathis couldn’t find his command as the winds gusted at jet-stream strength (20-25 mph).”
So 20 to 25 miles an hour qualifies as a jet stream in Texas. In Kansas, that’s just a healthy afternoon breeze.