A very cool shot sent in by Jane Haws of Dixon taken Monday night showing the wildfire smoke’s impact on the color of the moon turning it a neat orange/red. You may have also noticed that towards sunset everything seemed to turn more orange/yellow. This was also due to the wildfire smoke streaming across the skies all the way from California!
Hurricane Irma continues to be a powerful major hurricane now sitting at category 5 strength in the Caribbean. This makes it the strongest storm on record for the region, excluding the Gulf of Mexico. Currently the storm is packing sustained winds of 185 miles per hour and gusts well over 200 miles per hour. The current forecast track has it making a more northerly turn towards Florida by the end of the week. It is still a bit too early to determine where exactly Irma may land, but preparations are already underway in Florida. If you have interests, friends or family in that region make sure they stay up to date on the latest forecasts regarding this potentially catastrophicstorm.
Back closer to home today will be a bit cooler than yesterday with highs only reaching the middle to upper 60s as clouds build in the afternoon. So far it appears rain chances are extremely low.
Regardless of where Hurricane Irma lands it will block the pattern so that weather systems will grind to a halt. This means we will have a prolonged stretch of warm and dry weather here in the Sauk Valley with no real rain chances in the next 7 to 10 days. If you have an outdoor project that requires a lot of dry weather, now is the time to start/finish that over the next several days.
