Weird Weather in Ohio

Ok just to make it clear, I'm not whining (at least not in this post), but merely pointing out how weird the weather in Ohio can be. We are centered between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, so we get storm systems that are influenced by both.

Now to top that off Cincinnati is actually located in the Ohio River basin and nestled in between 7 hills. The locals here refer to them as mountains (Mt. Adams, Mt. Auburn, Mt. Lookout, Mt. Whatever...), but if you've been to the Smokies, the Rockies or even the Sierra Madre then you would refer to these as hills, but I digress.
Anyway, I'll start off with this past winter. The day before Christmas Eve we got hit with a storm that dumped our normal year's worth of snow on us in one day. We actually received 24 inches in 24 hours. It was beautiful (notice the photo above), except that my folks were flying in to spend the holiday with us. Yep, they were delayed. It seems that we don't quite have the snow moving equipment to handle storms that are normal in places like Buffalo, NY, who would laugh at this tiny snowfall. It was actully fun because I had just purchased and SUV the year before and I finally had a chance to really test out the 4-wheel-drive capability. I figured that the perfect time to do this was while all of the streets were officially closed by the authorities (naughty?, yes; fun?, Oh yeah!). Well, that's what happens when Canadian air meets Gulf breezes in the winter.

But wait, here comes the weird part. I never would have thought that I'd need to worry about a hurrican in Ohio, but this past summer made me a believer. The photo below is the leading edge of Hurricane Dennis as he entered Ohio. Now by no means am I saying that this storm caused us the distress that it did our southern friends, but it was pretty odd for us. Dennis sat on us for 10 days straight. He gave us 10 days of rain, without even a hint of sunshine. For Ohio this is not even close to normal for July weather. This is what happens when a Gulf storm meets up with Canadian air in the summer time!

I already mentioned our spring and fall (almost summer and almost winter) in a previous post so I won't spend anymore time on them except to add that those are tornado seasons for us.

It's always fun to listen to the weather report to hear the "normals" for each day because the "normal" never seems to happen. It is merely the average of the extremes that we have in this part of the country. So if you're thinking of moving to Ohio because the yearly average temperature is around 73F, just remember that it is the average of the number of days at 20 below zero (F) plus the number of days above 90F and that we rarely if ever actully see 73F for single day's temperature!