Cockroach Attacks Weatherman

Quite possibly the funniest blooper you will ever see come out of a weathercast:

Cockroach Attacks Weatherman (YouTube)

Winter Solstice On Thursday

The Winter Solstice will occur at 6:22 PM CST on Thursday December 21, 2006.  This is when the Sun’s apparent annual path is displaced farthest south from the Earth’s equator.

Chicago Enjoys It’s Mildest Mid-December Since 1939

Tom Skilling writes:

The temperature turnaround since December’s opening week has been remarkable.  The metro area is in the midst of its mildest mid-December period in the 67 years since 1939 - a major change from the chill which gripped the area in this month’s opening 8 days.  That opening was the 6th coldest December here since 1870.  The 40° average temperature over the past week and a half is running 11.8° above the 136 year average.  Only five December 10th-20th periods have been milder.  The period is running more than 20° warmer than the same period a year ago.

This fact worries me.  An analogy that a lot of meteorologists like to use is that weather patterns are like a rubber band.  The farther you pull it in one direction, the harder it snaps back the other way.  One could also liken this to a pendulum.  This long period of warmer than normal weather is lending credence to the idea that we will see a major pattern change early in the new year, leading to periods of extreme cold.  Of course there are other factors, but this is usually a good rule to get a gut feeling about things.

Risk Of A Christmas Storm Tied To A Rare 230 MPH Jet

I’m not positive about the actual track of this storm yet (stuff like this isn’t very certain this far out), but the WGN Weather Center put out this excellent feature about the links between a 230 MPH jet streak over the Pacific and how it will influence the track of the low that will develop on Monday.  I’m not putting down any forecast ideas here, but this is a great little piece of meteorological trivia.