Saturated soils, bank-full rivers render predicted thunderstorms ominous — chicagotribune.com The metro area is waterlogged and only a downpour away from far more serious flooding than anything which has occurred to date. That’s why forecasters are concerned about the introduction of thunderstorm-aggravating heat Wednesday and Thursday. Even Friday is to remain warm enough to foster t-storm development. The atmosphere is about as muggy as it gets here, brimming with 2″ of evaporated water, as evidenced by the humid tropical rain forest-level mid to upper 70(degrees) dew points, which threaten to erupt explosively in several waves of active thunderstorms in coming…
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On my way back home from Holy Moly today, I had my camera with me and stopped to take pictures of the nearby park, which was reclaimed from a wetland area when the subdivision was built 20 years or so ago. Whenever we get a lot of rain, it clearly shows “once a wetland, always a wetland,” because a pond or small lake will appear overnight in the area, and take weeks to drain. The nickname for our area, according to David, was “Hoffman’s Mistake” when he was in high school, and so I dub the body of water in…
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I finally got around to viewing the DVD, which I purchased from the Field Museum’s shop – they have an entire section of their very large shop devoted to fair trade items and environmentally-sensitive gifts. In spite of my pre-2000 dismissal of former Vice President Al Gore Jr. as a slightly dorky wonk, I was very moved by his presentation and the lifelong passion he’s had for learning about the environment, and for raising the alarm about climatic change. Yes, it’s annoying that he uses buzzwords and talking points, just like the Republicans, but also it’s incredibly frustrating and sobering…
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camera The inspection was done on the pre-pour work the other day, and today the workmen just put the wire reinforcement down, so we think they’re going to pour the new driveway today. It’s my theory that the company doing the street resurfacing does these little side projects on Saturday, because they’re on the Village’s payroll during the week, but working for their own company if they’re paid by homeowners to redo driveways and entrance walkways. We’ll keep an eye on that and then later I’m going over to Holy Moly for the big rummage sale.
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From our web camera: After what seems like weeks of calling and leaving fruitless messages, plus another week after our check cleared, the street construction people finally came back and tore out our crappy old asphalt driveway today. Wish I hadn’t been too busy at work to watch via the webcam. There may be some archive pictures available, will check later. Nice new cement driveway to follow shortly. [tags]webcam, driveway[/tags]
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WGN Weather Center Blog Monday afternoon’s thunderstorms brought an abrupt end to a hot, steamy day here. Outflow from the thunderstorms brought a rush of dense cold air to the surface dropping temperatures nearly 30º in less than an hour’s time. The heat relief is only temporary, however, with heat and humidity expected to return Tuesday, along with more thunderstorms. Here are some of the largest temperature drops as recorded on our WeatherBug network. Hoffman Estates 93º down to 64º a drop of 29º Wilmette 94º down to 66º a drop of 28º Algonquin 92º down to 67º a drop…
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Hey! Last night we had a thoroughly compacted, gravel road with a clay base. As of 910am this morning, we suddenly have a strip of asphalt on our side of the street, and the steamroller has been going back and forth smoothing it down. They started around 8am, I think, but it didn’t get noisy enough to bounce pictures off the wall and call our attention to their activities until just now. If you check the webcam you may see some of the equipment going by. That’s the new mailbox we put together, lying on the driveway waiting to be…
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Boing Boing: Merlin Mann’s decluttering roundup From FlyLady.net: The 27-Fling Boogie We do this assignment as fast as we can. Take a garbage bag and walk through your home and throw away 27 items. Do not stop until you have collected all 27 items. Then close the garbage bag and pitch it. DO NOT LOOK IN IT!!! Just do it. Next, take an empty box and go through your home collecting 27 items to give away. Suze Orman taught me this in her book, The Courage to be Rich. This will change the energy in your home and bring about…
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Boing Boing: What it takes to bring you Fiji water Every bottle of Fiji Water goes on its own version of this trip, in reverse, although by truck and ship. In fact, since the plastic for the bottles is shipped to Fiji first, the bottles’ journey is even longer. Half the wholesale cost of Fiji Water is transportation–which is to say, it costs as much to ship Fiji Water across the oceans and truck it to warehouses in the United States than it does to extract the water and bottle it.That is not the only environmental cost embedded in each…
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Via: Flickr Title: 06-19-07_1942.jpg By: GinnyRED57 Originally uploaded: 19 Jun ’07, 7.43pm CDT PST The Village, its wisdom, decided to repave all the streets in our subdivision this summer, and the notification letter was received Wednesday, when we went out of town. Although they’d previously announced we’d have more notice, they actually gave only 2 days’ warning before taking off the first layer of asphalt, on Friday. We returned Sunday night from our trip to find that the street was blocked off to thru traffic, but somewhat driveable. Good thing we moved the cars this morning before we left, they…