If you live in the desert Southwest: Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, you've probably already had your warmest day of the year. In fact, everyplace on that map with colors between yellow and red (including the one area in light pink) has probably already had its warmest day of the year. I'm looking at you, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and much of the country. In the green and blue colors, your warmest day is later. Where I live, we're going into the warmest week starting Sunday.
This kind of story is like most weather stories. You probably have an idea of the answer before you look at it, as I do, but the map gives a visual presentation and you can see how it varies around the country. When I first saw this I was a bit surprised that it says our warmest week is likely to be before August because I consider August to be the hottest month. I think the hottest part of our year is usually August plus a week or two on both sides.
On the other hand, I've been trying to get a look at Comet Neowise for about a week and haven't caught it yet. The last couple of days have been too cloudy or outright raining in the evening and it's clear tonight. I have a poor view to the Northwest, where the comet is located. I've circled it in red in this screen capture from Stellarium, a high end planetarium program. This is the sky at 9:30 tonight.
My view to the NW is compromised by all the trees in the neighborhood. I simply can't see there from my backyard, so I need to try moving around the property.
EDIT 07-24-20 2214 EDT: Left out the link to Stellarium. No relationships to the company, I just think they're useful.
The one clear night we had here on the Gulf Coast we went to a park on the water.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing was how it disappeared if you looked right at it naked eye, but it was very visible in peripheral vision.
The astronomers call that averted vision. I like the term averted imagination.
DeleteI could see it from my driveway right around when I posted this. It was high enough to clear the trees. I think it was visible naked eye by averted version. It was a dim fuzzy in 7x50 binoculars, but the longer I sat outside the better my night vision got and I thought I could see a tail streaming upwards from it.
There's a park out west of town, maybe it's worth going out there one evening in the next couple of days. Dip ourselves in tank of DEET first.
So not like Hale-Bopp back in '97. I remember seeing that over the street lights. Still, better than most since then.
When we took the pics I posted at my place we were dripping in DEET.
DeleteWe saved another observer by having the spray cans with us!