Ok, heres a stupid question for you mid Westerns…
dan,
If you live in the Midwest, and travel the Midwest, you quickly learn we have mini-climates every 100-200 miles or so… and all of them can produce miserable weather. There’s a big difference between extreme western Iowa and extreme eastern Iowa, between north and south Iowa. I live on the eastern edge of the flat, open plain just south of the Minnesota boarder… travel just a few miles east or north and there’s a lot more rolling, hilly land.
Where I live we get the winter NW wind that drops out of Canada, through the Dakotas and swings east across Iowa… and it almost never seems to stop blowing. It gets cold here, but not cold like northern Minnesota, we see -20, even -30, but in the teens below zero is more the norm. When that cold Canadian wind is howling out of the NW at 20-40 MPH it makes anything below freezing feel damn cold. On those rare below zero days when the air is calm and the sun is shinning, I can be outside all day… even work with my gloves off for a surprisingly long time (if may hands are dry).
Summers here rarely go over 100[sup]o[/sup], but it does happen. We see a lot of 90’s… and seems like the only friggin’ time the winds stop around here is when the mercury climbs above 90! The humidity is so thick you can see it in the air, and we’ll have days when the dew in the grass never evaporates… absolutely miserable. Just walking out to the mailbox will cause you to become drenched with sweat.
But then I need to drive out to Nebraska (for work) in July, it’s 112[sup]o[/sup], that SW wind is blasting across Kansas picking up fine particles of dirt… it hits you like a blast furnace and sand blaster all at the same time. Or maybe I need to go to South Dakota in January, where that Canadian wind hasn’t been tempered by temperature yet. Or maybe southern Iowa, Missouri, or Illinois in Auguest… more heat, more humidity, no wind… even the rain feels hot. I’ve been in northern Minnesota during winter… cold, damn cold for days on end… not near as much wind up in those trees, but the snow can get so deep the roads are more like tunnels. Minnesota roads are notorious for “black ice”… and until your truck has slid sideways down a road for several hundred feet with out losing any speed (I do mean no speed at all) you’ll never understand what that’s all about.
Really, if I travel 100 miles in any direction, the “mini-climate” and prevailing winds change… and change noticeably.
Oh, I almost forgot... It's -1[sup]o[/sup] here this morning, and surprisingly the wind has switched over night to a rare south 8 MPH breeze. Almost never get a south wind this time of year; so it will warm up nicely today, maybe even above freezing... and then probably snow!