I've seen fire and I've seen rain

“What's the weather for the weekend gonna be? Will it be hot? Cold? Mmmmmmm.”

If you’re a boomer and grew up in Chicago listening to WLS Radio, that was the intro to their weather spot. Even though you were more interested in hearing the latest Beatles or Stones tune, it was important to find out what was happening outside. Did you need a jacket or even boots, a hat, and gloves before you headed off to school?

We now have so many ways to find out what the weather will be that getting the information on the radio is almost obsolete. Most of us have an app on our phones that will tell us what the weather is like not only locally, but anywhere in the world.

Last week I was checking my weather app and it predicted the temperature for today would be one hundred thirteen degrees. That’s right 113. A few others saw theirs at one hundred nineteen. Crazy, right? This is Chicago, not Phoenix, Las Vegas or Palm Springs. The good news though, is that the temp for today has been downgraded to frosty ninety-nine.

The weather here is nothing compared to what has been happening elsewhere—Wildfires devastating Maui, Washington and Canada. The city of Lahaina has been destroyed with more than one hundred dead and close to another thousand still missing. Devastating!

And then there’s California.

The above photo is a look at Dodger Stadium last Sunday. Although it wasn’t as bad as it looked, it’s extremely unusual for there to be any rainwater anywhere close to that location in the summer. Hillary caused massive flooding in the desert areas while there were mudslides in the mountains.

While the tropical storm was getting started there was a 5.1 earthquake in Ojai. The good news is only limited damages and no deaths. And…while all this is occurring, my brother who lives in San Diego tells me that on his weather app, he’s getting a tornado warning.

Tropical storms, earthquakes and tornadoes. Southern California hit the trifecta of weather conditions simultaneously. All you needed were locusts and the killing of first-born children and you would have had Passover in August.

It obviously has been a crazy summer in the world of weather. Between what has occurred this week and the earlier overly-hot streak in places like Phoenix, conditions have been like we’ve rarely seen before. Hmmm…if there was only some way to explain all of this? And…there’s still almost another month of summer left to come. What’s next?

“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain. I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end.”