Thursday is our first Maranda Park Party.  Our first party is at River Oaks Park in Kalamazoo.  It’s free and kids under age 18 get a free lunch!  The parties run from Noon to 2 PM and have lots of entertainment, games, food, drink and prizes.  I’ll be at this Park Party along with Kyle Underwood.  Here’s a schedule of parties this summer:

• June 20th- River Oaks Park, Kalamazoo, MI
• June 27th-Lamar Park, Wyoming, MI
• July 11th- Smith Ryerson Park, Muskegon, MI
• July 18th- Kollen Park, Holland MI
• July 25th- Northwestern Middle School, Battle Creek, MI

    This is the MODIS Lake Michigan Satellite Picture from this afternoon.  Click on the image or click here to enlarge.  With all the rain, there is a lot of deep, green color to the land.  A lot of fields are somewhat bare, given that the corn and soybeans are pretty small here on June 19th.  You can see the cumulus clouds didn’t form over Lake Michigan or in the “shadow” of the lake breezes.  Yes, you can still see the tornado scar WNW of Green Bay from a twister that moved through a forested area in June 2007.  Here’s pictures of Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.  Also, check out this rare mostly clear view of Alaska (huge, warm ridge over Alaska now) and this cool picture of the volcano and it’s steam on the island of  Guau in the South Pacific (part of Vanuatu).   The volcano is 25 miles wide at it’s base underwater and rises 10,000 feet above the ocean floor.  Most of the volcano is underwater.  The island is about 12 miles across.

Also, pictures of the Griffins Homecoming.

  Another great pic. here from Jack Martin.  Click on the pic. to enlarge.  Beautiful day today.  I may be doing weather live at the Van Andel for the big welcome home party for the Griffins.  Doors open at 5 PM, party starts at 6 PM.  Free t-shirts to the first 3,000 through the doors – cool.  It was chilly this AM – low temperatures:  47 G.R. and Kalamazoo, 46 Battle Creek, 44 Lansing, 42 Jackson, 41 at the agricultural stations near Belding and Ceresco, 40 at the ag. station in Lawrence, 39 Cadillac and Baldwin, 35 Grayling and Pellston, 33 at Leota in Clare Co.  Once again this morning there were below freezing temps. in the U.P.:  32 at Watton, 30 Champion, 29 at Doe Lake and a frosty 27 at Spincich Lake.  Including today, Grand Rapids will be about 1.8 degrees cooler than average for June so far.  I bet that gets erased as the warm, humid air moves in starting on Friday (tomorrow, Thurs., will still be near normal…high low 80s.  The period from Friday thru next week will be warm to hot and more humid.  It’s not impossible that 6/21 to about 7/2 could be the hottest stretch of the summer (I didn’t say that was a given, just that it’s possible).  The ridge/heat from Alaska builds down into the mainland U.S.  Much of the U.S. is going to be hot and humid for the last 10 days of June.   I do expect this ridge/heat build up to be temporary and not the pattern for the whole rest of the summer.  I think we revert around the 4th of July back to the ridge over the Rockies and WNW flow over the Great Lakes.  That will give us more average temperatures for much of July and opportunities for west-east or northwest to southeast moving thunderstorms.  At this point, I don’t think we’ll see as strong a dry period as we had last summer.   Severe weather stays west of us for the next couple days.   And, it’s never too early for meteorologist Joe Bastardi to get excited about winter weather.  A tweet from him this AM:  “Winter in the big 3 industrial areas of the far east, Europe and Eastern/central N America could be coldest since 1980s”.  He’s geeked about a weak El Nino in area 3.4 and winter troughs over the eastern U.S. Europe and China.  As I write this…some nice t-storms in N. Texas.  Check out the 1-day animation from the Barrow, Alaska skycam of the sun passing to the north (land of the midnight sun in June/July).

<–Midnight sun over the Arctic Ocean. The Summer Solstice occurs at 11:04 AM Friday. At that minute, the sun is as far north as it gets in it’s yearly journey. It’s the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere with 15 hours and 21 minutes of daylight in Grand Rapids. North of the Arctic Circle (66.56° north latitude) the sun is above the horizon 24 hours a day. At Barrow, Alaska the next sunset will be August 2. Check out the webcam and cool daily image movies from Barrow. The sun now rises well north of due east and sets well north of due west. You can see twilight to the northwest at 11 PM in a dark spot and the twilight at 11 PM is centered a little more to the north than to the west.  Friday, the sun is directly overhead at solar noon over a line we call the Tropic of Cancer, which is about 72 miles south of Key West, Florida, but north of the main Hawaiian Islands. In Grand Rapids the sun rises to an angle of 70.5 degrees above the southern horizon, with the highest sun at 1:44 PM. Temperature lags the position of the sun by about four weeks…so the highest average temperatures in Michigan occur around July 20. This is the time of year to use your sunscreen. Also, check this out. Where Mexican Federal Highways cross the Tropic of Cancer, the position is marked annual with absolute precision and marked to show the annual drift (in the picture between 2005 and 2010).

   A tornado crossed the edge of the Denver International Airport this afternoon.  Here is the observation from the airport:  0222 PM TORNADO DENVER INTL AIRPORT 39.87N 104.67W 06/18/2013 DENVER CO OFFICIAL NWS OBS TORNADO TOUCHDOWN EAST OF DIA CONCOURSES. ASOS REPORTED 97 MPH GUST.   No injuries were reported.   Passengers at the DIA were evacuated to designated tornado shelters. The airport’s normally busy concourse was completely empty during the warning period.  Here’s pictures and video.  The storms also produced hail over an inch in diameter.  Picture from the Denver NWS.

  GRIFFINS WIN!!!  GRIFFINS WIN!!!  The Grand Rapids Griffins get the Calder Cup. Big ratings on WXSP, I bet.  Here’s a list that shows where you can find WXSP in your town or on your cable or satellite TV.  Our own Larry Figurski (a great hockey player and Bob Kaser announced the game on radio.  , you can listen to Griffins  games on WOOD-AM radio.     Here’s pictures of Friday Night’s game.  Picture in the middle was just sent to me by Larry Figurski during Game 6 Tues. night – Larry did the play-by-play on  WOOD radio.

    From Patrick DeHaan at GasBuddy:  “Hey Bill – Tell your readers to continue holding off on filling their tanks. GR prices could drop into the $3.50s in the next week at some stations.  Today’s average of $3.88 will likely be in the 3.60s a week from today.”

   Click on the images to enlarge. Record heat covers much of Alaska, including all-time record high temperatures at Talkeetna (96), Cordova (90), Valdez (89) and Seward (88). Other daily high temperatures: 94 McGrath,86 Fairbanks, 84 Nome, 82 Juneau, 81 Anchorage, 74 Yakutat and 55 Barrow.   Alaska has been in a general cooling trend for the past 10 years.  In contrast to that, the Danish Meteorological Institute reports that north of 80 degrees latitude, this is the coldest start to summer since records began in 1958.  If you like it cold, Vostok Antarctica is the place to be.  On June 9th, the HIGH temperature at Vostok was -101F.  The ice is slowly breaking up on Hudson Bay (a process that can take 6 weeks).  It’s still more than 80% ice covered and remains a source of cool air for the Northern U.S. in June. In summer, you can get some sharp temperature changes when the wind changes up by Hudson Bay.  On May 20, the high temperature at Churchill was 72, the next day the high was 36.  Pic on the left courtesy of the NWS Alaska.

Also, check out the cool lightning pic. from NYC last Sunday night.

        Click on the images to enlarge.  There was frost and a freeze across parts of Upper Michigan this AM.  Watersmeet dipped to 28, Kenton and Doe Lake bottomed out at 29, Champion was 30 this morning, Amasa 31.  Ironwood stopped at 34, Munising 35 and while the temperature officially stayed above freezing at 36 at the 5-foot level at Marquette, Houghton and Manistique, scattered frost was noted at the ground level and on rooftops.   The middle picture shows an area of thin smoke from wildfires in N. Canada that shows in an otherwise clear sunset.  On the right, you can see the effect of winter storms along the Lake Superior shore.  Also of note, this is the first morning I can’t see the snow pile on the Mt. Ripley webcam.   Speaking of webcams, check out all the webcams you can see here at www.woodtv.com.

   Click the picture (from NBC5) to enlarge.   A mysterious silver slime has closed two Lake Michigan beaches.  The Porter Beach and the Indiana Dunes State Park beaches were closed after children came out of the water with a silvery, almost metallic material sticking to them.  Lifeguards went up and down the beach telling everyone to “get out of the water immediately”.  Several agencies are investigating the substance, including the United States Geological Survey, which took samples of the more than 1/4-mile slick.   Winds are northeast today and winds will remain unfavorable for any of this substance to move toward Michigan beaches over the next 3 days.    There’s also a Beach Hazards Statement in effect through tonight from Berrien Co. Michigan around the lake to Lake County Illinois.