Category Archives: Weather

For Bill

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Back in 2014, I included a chapter in my book detailing Bill Schock’s war experiences as they related to his reporting on the crash of Braniff International flight 250 in 1966.

The editors at McFarland, rightly but regretfully, suggested I delete the chapter since it was rather tangentially related to the subject, namely “Deadly Turbulence: The Air Safety Lessons of Braniff Flight 250 and Other Airliners, 1959-1966.” (Yeesh, that title.) They wanted 80,000 words; I gave them 96,000, so yeah, some cuts were needed—like the chapter about events which happened in 1966.

But for what it’s worth, in honor of Bill, here’s the deleted chapter. I hope it does him at least some honor.

Farewell, Bill. Thank you.

Update 05:00 26-Jun-18: I revised the chapter to correct a few annoying typos and to add some information, including original source documents for Bill’s war record. Click the link below again to get the revised version. Thanks!]

Read the chapter at this link:
«Deleted Chapter About Bill Schock from Deadly Turbulence by Steve Pollock»

We Are Minnesota.

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Coats? Coats?! 20 degrees outside and snowing, eh? We don't need no stinkin' coats. We. Are. MINNESOTA!!(Two movie references there, sorry.)

Posted by Steve Pollock on Thursday, February 4, 2016

Wednesday

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112 Degrees Thumbnail

This pic pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the weather this week.

It actually got hotter after I took this picture; it was 114 degrees later in the afternoon.

God, living in the valley is hell.

Cold Weather

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Cold is finally here. Temps have been frigid the past several days, with highs not hitting 50 and lows easily dipping down near freezing. The past couple of days have even necessitated gloves and a parka. A few people are still walking around in shorts but they are few and far between. The mass grumbling and moaning haven’t started yet, but this seems to be mostly because the cold snap was not preceded by much of anything in the way of preliminaries — it was, simply, suddenly way colder than it’s been for six months.

Wrong Again

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It’s been back up in the mid-80s with high dewpoints for the past several days, just proving once again that trying to predict weather in Michigan is (especially if you’re a rank amateur, like me) a fool’s errand.

Autumn Is Here

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Today did, in all seriousness, feel for the first time like autumn. It didn’t really get much above 60 degrees all day (it’s supposed to dip down to 36 tonight), and there was that unmistakable bite in the air that hasn’t been around for at least five months, or whenever the freak day or two was in April when we had really chilly weather at the tail end of winter (forget spring, there was no spring to speak of at all this year — just a long winter and an equally long summer). Some folks were out today defiantly wearing their shorts and T-shirts — it was still sunny, after all — and some were dressed up in full-on parka-zipped-up-to-the-neck mode. Summer weather won’t be here much longer, the forecasts of temps in the mid-to-high 70s over the next few days notwithstanding.

Autumn?

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Yesterday actually felt like the first hints of autumn to me — it was very hot, like it’s been for the most part for at least the past three weeks here in Ann Arbor, but it also was somewhat windy, the heat was accompanied by less humidity than it has been, and there was a laziness to the color of the sunlight that felt like very late summer light. It’s supposed to hit 91 degrees today, so it’s possible that that feeling yesterday was just a fluke. But it’s supposed to cool down significantly starting tomorrow — down into the seventies — so perhaps it’s the start of a trend.