I hate to complain about the weather, but...

Cooler September Ahead

August 27th, 2009 at 11:12 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather

The summer of 2009 (the months of June, July and August) will go into the record books as cooler and wetter (despite a dry stretch in July) than average.  We’ve only made 90 degrees three times this summer.  We average 9.5 days of 90-degrees here in Grand Rapids.  Last summer we had only four 90-degree days.  We’re over 13″ of rain since June 1, already nearly 3″ above average and that doesn’t count what we’ll get between now and Monday.   Despite the rain, we’ve only had 12 days this summer when we’ve seen lightning or heard thunder.   The two biggest storm days were the big wind and rain dump (up to 8″) along with 3 tornadoes on June 19 in the Holland area and Allegan Co., and the very strong wind that pushed from Grand Haven/Muskegon to northern Kent Co. on August 9.  Michigan has had only 13 severe weather watches this summer.  The past four years have brought at least 30.  The pattern looks cooler for the coming month than September of last year.  I wouldn’t be surprised if we wound up 3-5 degrees cooler this September than September 2008.

A cool September doesn't bother me.  Neither did the cool summer, but all the rain without any good thunderstorms does.  At least every other weekend was 15 degrees below normal with rain.  Which leads me to this weekend.  Tomorrow morning I head out for a bachelor party on the Manistee River in Northern Michigan.  The forecast calls for highs in the 50's and 60's with showers Friday and Saturday.  I am sure we will still have our fun though.

Andy's Bachelor Party

Andy kicked the weekend of with the first of many white zins.

Great evening for a ball game.  Rockies v. Cubbies at Coors Field.

Looking back at Denver before the game.

A foul ball landed on Reed while he was taking a bite of his dog causing him to drop it on his pants.  Or maybe he just dropped it on his pants.

Amazing seats.  We saw quite a bit of action in right field or as Tigers fans call it Kaline's corner.

The whole gang!

Feats of strength!

Andrew drove us all back to the hotel.  Actually cam arranged a sweet hip hop SUV to drive us home.  It had a system that rivaled Austin Richardson's.

Our pad outside of Breckenridge.

Andy took a crew fly fishing on Saturday and the rest of us took a nice little hike through McCullough Gulch.

Reedo and Company

There was an alpine lake at the top of these falls which we never made it to.

Looking down the trail at Company.

Rock surfing

Breckenridge looked very inviting to a skier.

Golf in China

I was lucky enough to play golf while in China.  We left at 6 am Sunday to avoid the heat, which is not possible.  The course we played at was about 4o minutes outside of Nanjing.  It was my first time golfing this year, on the hardest course I have ever played, with clubs I have never used before, and in the presence of our CEO.  

There were many holes like this.  Water everywhere.  Here's Kirk, part of the design team in the UK, teeing off.

We were two foursomes.  Each group had two extended golf carts and two caddies.  The caddies at the club were young ladies who spoke no English.  They were great caddies; mine taught me how to count to 10 in Mandarin.  

There were lots of cool stone bridges on the course.

I've always wanted to play a course with an island green.  This is a view of an island green on a par 3, where I put my tee shot in the drink.  However, that was the first ball I had lost to that point.  I played some super golf.  I managed a 47 on the front and a 54 on the back for a 101.  That put me in second place.  Yes I beat the CEO, but I was not in his group.