Yesterday, the Weather channel announced that a derecho (pronounced “deh-REY-cho) was sweeping across the upper Midwest and headed straight towards us. Where do they come up with these new and frightening weather terms? I don’t know, but by late morning the thunderstorms rolled in. There was no violent weather here, but it did look like down state (the upper LP) got pasted. There was a brief moment of worry, when a siren briefly went off, but no idea why.

So, it rained here, which is just what the doctor ordered. We slept in a little and then once awake waited for the rain. It came and made for a noontime floor show. Much to do about nothing, but at least enough of a to do to excuse our doing nothing.

We walked the beach after lunch and saw an impressive amount of wildlife. Mainly birds, although there was this one Monarch and a Snowshoe. We saw a Bald Eagle being chased by gulls and a kingfisher swimming, who’s jittering is so similar to that of the red squirrels that I wonder if we’ve mistaken them for one of these before. There was a single sandpiper, a mother merganser, with her flock in tow and some Canada geese who had swum across to poop on our beach. I think that the storm had shook-up all of the wildlife and got them out for us to see.

Before we arrived here the news had been reporting that This year, the Great Lakes were at record high water levels and that the water temperatures were also near record high levels. However, the beach is surprisingly wide this year. Wider than last year and about the water temperature, all I can say is that I’m not feeling the heat.