School Visit and Millie

We had a chance to visit the 4th graders at Meadowlark Elementary School last Friday in Andover. It was fun to teach the kids about weather and to ask them about what they wanted for Christmas. As we always do, we did the cloud-in-a-bottle experiment and had them check out the weather balloon. Lots of ooohhhhs and aaaahhhhhssss.


Millie is ready for Christmas. As to what she'll get for Christmas, I'm not really sure. She needs a new dog bed and she wouldn't turn down some milk bones either. The squeaky toys are almost a joke because they hardly last for more than about 3 days, and then the squeaky is out and then comes the stuffing.


At any rate, we hope you have a great Christmas. It will not be a white one this year, as we are stuck in one of the longest dry ruts we've had in years. Storms go right over Kansas and produce next to nothing for our area. Another one will come through on Monday (Dec. 20) and produce absolutely nothing for our state. Another one may come through on Thursday (De. 23), but it looks to mainly pass through northeast Kansas, so we'll probably remain dry into the last full week of 2010. Maybe the new year will bring something for us, but these patterns are so difficult to break. One of the main reasons we are dry is because the storm track is too far north, and even when it dips down into Kansas, there just isn't moisture available until the storm gets east of us. If we are going to break this dry spell at this time of the year (which will be hard to do), we are going to have to get a system out of the southwest. Computer models indicate some kind of change in the pattern for the end of the year, but I don't think we should hold our breath just yet.