Sleeping Giant Awakens?

The fallish feel to the air this morning had me thinking a bit about the changing seasons and my hometown. So here's a slice of Morrison, Illinois the covered bridge on the northwest side of town. This is a new creation however. For years the Rock Creek was spanned by what everyone called "The Red Bridge". My friend Mike's mom loaded us all up in the station wagon with inner tubes stuffed in the back and tied on top one summer's day. We were on one of the greatest adventures of all time, one we were certain hadn't been duplicated since the days of Lewis and Clark. We were going to float downstream from the Red Bridge to Water Works Park. Others might have followed the trail we blazed, but certainly no one has had as much fun as we did. And it was a trip that didn't require a pick-up. The end of the voyage was pretty much in Mike's back yard.

It was a great start to the day and even though we hit 91 this afternoon, the dewpoints were in the upper 50s to around 60 during the afternoon which is very comfortable air. But those dewpoints will be climbing tomorrow through the weekend. We'll stay dry Friday, but we'll have a chance for some pop-up storms this weekend. Our best chance come up Monday into Tuesday with another front heading our way.

Friday: Mostly sunny and steamy. High: 93

Saturday: Partly cloudy with a 30% chance for a pop-up storm. High: 93

Sunday: Partly cloudy with a 30% chance for a pop-up storm. High: 92

Monday: Partly cloudy with a 40% chance for scattered storms, especially late. High: 90

Tuesday: Partly cloudy with 50% chance for storms. High: 88

Tropical storm "Debby" is still churning away in the open Atlantic. It still looks like a fish storm. But today tropical depression #5 was investigated by the Hurricane Hunters. This system is close to tropical storm strength right now, and may be upgraded to Tropical Storm "Ernesto" in the next 24 hours. This is a storm that has trouble written all over it. Check out the official NHC path here: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/205704.shtml?5day?large

Uggh. Can you imagine a hurricane in the Gulf headed toward oil platforms just before Labor Day weekend? Speculators get ahold of that and watch the pump prices jump. I was just thinking to myself yesterday I couldn't recall prices being this low around here in quite awhile. Buckle up for a possibly wild tropical ride. 2002 was a sleeper with only 3 tropical storms up until August 28th of that year. And then storms were being named every 3 or 4 days:

• Dolly formed Aug. 29th
• Edouard formed Sep. 1st
• Fay formed Sep. 5th
• Gustav formed Sep. 8th
• Hanna formed Sep. 12th
• Isidore formed Sep. 14th
• Josephine formed Sep. 17th
• Kyle formed Sep. 20
• Lili formed Sep. 21