Crazy Weekend Weather

One of my favorite things about living next to Lake Superior is the constant bizarre weather.  It never looses it’s entertainment appeal for me, because Lake Superior weather is highly shocking much of the time.  Every year that we have lived here, there has been some kind of highly unusual weather occurrence, sometimes multiple strange weather related events in a year.  Here, the meteorologists stay busy, to be sure.

This winter was cold, long and hard.  As a result, the Lake almost set a record for icing over in epic new proportions.  This was followed by a cold and very snowy spring, so there is still a significant amount of ice floating out on the big water.  It is not solid ice anymore, but lots and lots of ice bergs that shift and crash around on the water.  Depending on the wind, sometimes the ice floats out to the open water.  Sometimes it floats over to Wisconsin.  Last week it floated right back to our little tip of the Lake and settled in for a few days, right as we experienced an outlandish heat wave.  Typically our days settle in around 50 degrees this time of year, sometimes a little more.  For weeks we haven’t even been able to get up to fifty degrees, which felt tropical, and it rained and rained and rained some more.  Then, all of the sudden on Saturday it was 80 degrees.  On Sunday it was 85 degrees.  On Monday parts of Duluth over the hill noted 90 degree temperatures.  90 degrees is roasting hot in the middle of the summer.  We all hardly knew what to do with ourselves here.  Thankfully it wasn’t humid, or we would have stopped moving entirely, I think.

For the record, I hate hot weather, which is why I love living here.  Cold, rain, snow, and fog are my friends.  I don’t mind a few warm sunny days, but a sforzando to 90 degrees in May was not pleasant in my opinion.

Regardless, Saturday was Mr. SP’s half birthday, so to celebrate we picked up YaYa from sewing lessons and headed down to our favorite pizza restaurant in Canal Park for lunch.  Since it was his half birthday, he was thrilled to have a glass of Dr. Pepper with his pizza.  We headed off to the sandy beach to spend a few hours playing in the sand.  Down at the beach on Saturday it was a comfortable 55 degrees, and the sand was warm and toasty in the sun.  The water was chilled by gigantic ice burgs.  Such dichotomy.

Of course, my risk taking boy was thrilled to do some hopping from one ice flow to the next, for as long as his feet could take the cold.  Eventually the ice sort of sliced into his tender feet, actually.  In fact there was a lot of feet drama on this beach excursion.  YaYa stepped on some glass that sliced into her big toe, and everyone needed a bandaid for something by the time we were all through.  

Mr. TOF loved running as fast as he cold on the warm sand.  It was so silly right by the water, because the ice water meeting the warm dry sand was actually steaming.  You can’t really see it in the pictures, but it was quite a spectacle.

The kidlets all had to do at least a little wading in the water.  They couldn’t stay out no matter how hard they tried, but the splashes in were remarkably short on this beach trip.  Instead, there were some excellent sand castles built, as well as some large holes dug.  We brought along several water receptacles and a shovel, which kept people quite busy.

During the frenzy I drew a large circle in the sand, outlined it with all the flip flops in the family, and told everyone they couldn’t enter my circle of bliss while I relaxed in the warm sand.  It was glorious.  

On our way home we stopped at the rose garden so I could take a couple of quick pictures from there.  There was a large ore boat anchored out in the Lake all weekend, and right before I managed to park the car and get out, another big tanker boat passed right by and headed toward the bridge.  I didn’t quite manage to get to a good view in time to capture it, though.  Later that evening we got ice cream to celebrate Mr. SP’s half birthday, and he was most happy about not having to do any of his evening work.