Wellyopolis

June 13, 2005

Five day "forecast"

Grandma's marathon is now just five days away.

If Duluth was most inland American cities now would be the time that anxious runners could look at the forecast and start making some kind of mental preparations for the weather ahead. 45 and cloudy, yippee! Or 80 and sunny, holy shit!

Unfortunately Duluth sits beside the largest lake (by surface area)body of inland water in the world. This has two effects on the weather, familiar to those of us who grew up beside the largest body of water in the whole wide world. First, the weather can vary wildly and quickly. Secondly, the weather close to the water can be cooler and windier than the weather just a few miles further inland.

For this reason I put little to no stock in what is currently forecast for Duluth: overnight low of 54 for Friday night and high of 77 on Saturday. That isn't to say that I won't look at the weather channel every day between now and then to see the updated forecast, but just to bemuse myself at how the forecasts five days oscillate around.

Basically I'm just going to wake up and see what the weather is like on Saturday morning at 4.30am. And then know that even that might change significantly in the next six hours.

Posted by robe0419 at June 13, 2005 03:07 PM | TrackBack
Comments

If I'm not mistaken, the Caspian and Black Seas are larger than Lake Superior, and are both inland water bodies.

Posted by: Jim at June 13, 2005 07:21 PM

Weather along the North Shore can definately be unpredictable. We vacationed up near Lutsen and Grand Marais a few summers ago. We rented a cabin right on Lake Superior. One day we went hiking in the hills just a few miles inland. While it was hot and sunny the whole day up on the trails, we could see that the lake and the cabin were shrouded in clouds the whole time. It was amazing that the clouds never "burned off."

Anyway, good luck with the marathon! I've heard the Grandma's marathon is a fun one (if you can call a run like that "fun"). At least it's a well-organized one, unlike the recent Chicago Lakeshore marathon that unwittingly forced its participants to run 27 miles!

Posted by: Carrie at June 14, 2005 12:35 PM

Evan,

Good luck this weekend! I hope the race goes well and you achieve your goals. I'll be checking the results on Saturday afternoon.

Posted by: David Van Riper at June 17, 2005 07:59 AM
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