2021 Perseid Meteor Shower 8/14/2021

 

  This year's Perseid Meteor Shower was met with periods of perfectly clear skies and a new enough moon so that it was out of the picture by midnight.  The first photo is from Thursday night when the peak of the shower was predicted.  The rest are from Friday night which was slightly past peak but still provided a respectable showing.

 The next two photos were taken consecutively with camera's cable release locked, and they appear to show the same meteor, unless a fragment broke off of the main piece of space dirt. Never photographed that before.

  The last photo shows a jet and 6 satellites which superficially could be mistaken for meteors.

Triple Digit Weather...The Hard Way 8/10/2021

        Usually when the number 100 enters the conversation in a discussion of August weather, it is in terms of heat index or the actual stifling air temperature.  But on Tuesday evening when a line of thunderstorms crossing Lake Michigan reached the eastern shore it kicked up a 90.6 mph sustained (2 minute average) and a gust of 105.1 mph.  My 3-digit gust even got a mention on the online news site MLive

     My house survived unscathed but the winds took down a couple of my dead trees and up 5" diameter limbs off of some of the live ones.  It also mangled the middle section of the pole that supported my Purple Martin house and tossed the bird house and top 6-foot section of pole a little over 90 feet.

  The next morning I took the photo below, when I had to go to Ludington for a dentist appointment.

  The storm took out power to over half the customers of the company that supplies our electricity.  My power was out for 49 hours, but the standby generator was up to the task.