Kansas Wind??????

[Diane Amberg]

   Here too. South or southwest winds bring all the heat and humidity up to us from Georiga, and bring our worst winter snowstorms too. Give me a nice cool summer breeze from the north or northwest any day. But then we get the Nor'easters  and get swiped by hurricanes too. 

[kdfrawg]

It is indeed the North wind that you want. Were the wind to blow from the South, thus moving the humidity from over Kansas to Canada, that air would be automagically replaced by a mass of air that was previously living in the Southern Gulf of Mexico, and that new air would be at least as humid as what you got rid of.

I think that makes it Wilma 1, Janet 0, on the subject of winds, although that could change at any time. It's an evil wind, you know, that blows no good.

And speaking of mosquitoes, I have only seen two of them all year. One got blown past me and into the house wall behind my deck about a month ago. The other one came home with my wife from a walk about two weeks ago. I'm not complaining, but it is most odd to live in Kansas and not have mosquitoes in summer. However, picking up on something Diane said (in another thread, I think) we have more than enough extra fireflies this year to make up for any lack in mosquitoes.

[Mom70x7]

Not to worry - we have plenty of mosquitoes down here. If there were a way to ship them to you, for a nostalgia trip, you'd probably have several boxloads. 

[Diane Amberg]

   Nope, not me. That was Dandymomm wishing for some lightning bugs. We have them, two kinds in fact. Not as many as years ago, but lots.

[kdfrawg]

It has been a bumper-crop year for lightning bugs here. From the back of our house there is almost no artificial light at night, and boy, does the sky get full of twinkles just as it gets fully dark! I get out on the deck pretty much every night just to watch them. And I'm not unhappy about having very few mosquitoes; I'm not a big fan of those little buzzers, but I am surprised nonetheless. Maybe it's part of the whole changing weather trend. After all, Kansas now has armadillos, as evidenced by considerable road kill, clear up toward Topeka, so maybe the mosquitoes have mainly moved to Minnesota or North Dakota. It could be that the Elk County mosquitoes just didn't get the memo containing the travel plans.

[Diane Amberg]

I saw Armadillos near Howard when we were there in '95. several dead ones, and one at night, in the middle of the road, having a stand off with a cat. Daddy said they weren't around when he lived there.

[kdfrawg]

Yup, I think armadillos in Kansas are a relatively new phenomenon. It seems like the bird population has changed a bit, too. It is amazing what a couple of degrees of additional heat can do over the course of a season, for example with glaciers, and I would not be at all surprised if animals were not sensitive to small changes like that. Pretty soon, they'll be having armadillo cook-offs in Canada.

[dandymomma]

I keep wondering if we will ever see lightning bugs in Washington. Well, the west half anyway. Our summers seem to just get hotter and hotter. They might have them in Eastern Wa. But I'm really not sure. Anyone know anybody in Spokane or Yakima???

[kdfrawg]

I don't think fireflies like salt air. I lived in the San Francisco area for over 25 years, always either right on the ocean or right on the bay, and there were certainly none there. However, I think there were fireflies in Roseville, which is just a bit east of Sacramento. So maybe there are some in Eastern Washington. I'm not sure.

[kdfrawg]

Oh-oh, it's even worse than I thought. Take a look at:

http://hymfiles.biosci.ohio-state.edu/projects/FFiles/habitat.html