I continue to not really know what I want this place to be, but I also acknowledge that if I never put anything here it won’t be anything at all.
It’s certainly been a hot start to 2023. The late-winter, early-spring period spanning ~ January to March is always my busiest for work related travel. Farmers are out of the fields holding annual planning meetings and ag conferences and weather is always a hot topic. I’ll travel just about anywhere across the U.S. and Canada, speaking at meetings that look like anything from 30 farmers gathering at the town hall with a home made spaghetti dinner to massive expos held in major metropolitan centers with attendees into the thousands.
Somehow, before all this got going in 2023 I was treated to my first storm chase of the new calendar year. And not just “I got to drive out into the country and hear some thunder” either - I was staring at a full-fledged tornadic supercell with my iphone going BRR BRR with wireless emergency alerts because I was inside a tornado warning polygon.
While a few local colleagues were watching their first tornadoes of the year near Interstate 72 & the towns of Illiopolis and Maroa, Illinois I was awaiting the return of my wife from a Florida getaway to spend some time with her family. Her flight that was due to arrive at Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington, Illinois at 2:50 on the afternoon of January 3rd was delayed for mechanical issues and landed shortly before 4 PM.
When we got back to the car I mentioned the tornadic storm roughly 30 miles to our south and noted that it would be crossing our return path down Interstate 74. If we hustled, we might be able to catch a view of something beneath the storm base just before sunset. “That could be fun” was the exhausted green light from Sophie, and we plotted a course.
We got a look at the storm near the small town of DeWitt near Highway 10. While the storm didn’t produce a tornado in the time we were looking at it, it did exhibit classic supercellular structure which was a treat to behold in the first week of January over the flat land of central Illinois.
I did a live severe weather update over the air with WILL AM 580 and then I promised Sophie I’d get her travel worn body home to dinner and bed.
The following morning I caught a flight to Denver for Potato Expo 2023 where I’d be speaking on the topic of Weather Risk in Production Potato Farming. It was nice to see a little snow on the ground when I arrived in Denver. We’re still chasing our first 2”+ snowfall here in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and aside from a windblown inch of snow and a few days of sub-zero arctic air it’s been a relatively gentle winter locally.
I went for a walk after getting into the hotel along a little bike path that crossed some open fields near the Gaylord Rockies Hotel & Convention Center. I always like the idea of a nice outdoor walk after a long travel day and was really excited when I scoped this trail out on Google Maps. I kind of thought the snow would have been shoveled or plowed along the bike path though - this made my walk in business casual shoes a little more difficult. Still, a little sunshine and some cold, fresh air felt good after a day in the commercial air travel ecosystem.
I spoke at Potato Expo when it was hosted in Vegas in 2020 and fell in love. It’s a big conference obviously focused on potato farming and the National Potato Council always put on a great event. Tons of delicious potato based foods, and some really fascinating presentations.
I flew home to Illinois for the weekend and then on Monday, January 9th I drove to Canada!
I’ve been producing our Canadian weather content at Nutrien since we started producing Canadian weather content in early 2019. The unfortunate juxtaposition of a global pandemic has made it difficult to get up to Canada to present at these meetings and mingle with my colleagues north of the 49th. One of my 2023 priorities is to spend a lot more time up there across the border.
I couldn’t have asked for better travel weather from Illinois to Ontario in the second week of January. Sunny skies, mild temperatures, calm winds, all made for a gentle drive and ideal standing-by-the-gas-pump-refueling conditions.
I crossed the border at Sarnia around 7 PM, and got into Hanover, Ontario around 9. That meant that, unfortunately, my first drive through Canada would be in the dark of the night. I couldn’t see anything, but knew I was paralleling Lake Huron for much of my drive to Hanover.
Along my drive I’d been planning to get into my hotel and settle in and watch the College Football Playoff Championship. Turns out the game was over rather quickly, as the score was 52-7 in the 3rd quarter when I found it on TV. With that not sounding all that fun and feeling a little stir-crazy, I figured I’d go for a walk instead. I was in Canada, in a strange new town - I should go walk down Main Street!
That was an amazing decision. I’m not even three minutes into my walk down Main Street in Hanover before the sky just opens up into total snow globe conditions. The meteorological background here was that a narrow band of lake-effect snow coming off Lake Huron was paying a short visit, but my perception of the event was a perfectly-timed stimulating weather gift from the sky. I walked around downtown Hanover getting covered in snow until it tapered off to nothing again in 15 minutes time. I made my way back to my cute little hotel (The Grey Rose Suites in Hanover, ON) and got settled into bed.
The next morning I woke up and cut together a little video of my walk through the snow while I drank my morning coffee:
After that, I updated my morning forecast content and decided to walk to a nearby Tim Horton’s for coffee and breakfast. I decided to get myself a Canadian Bacon breakfast sandwich, and grabbed a Canadian Maple donut for the kiddo back at home.
I was first on the agenda for Crops Day at Grey Bruce Farmers Week in Elmwood, Ontario and presented to a group of around 260 people from across the region. Back on the road around lunchtime I wanted to make sure that I got a good look at Lake Huron before I crossed back into the U.S.
Something I hadn’t really thought about before the trip was the fact that my AT&T data was not working across the border. I could text and make phone calls, but once I was away from the hotel WIFI searching Google Maps for a beach along Lake Huron, or searching for *anything* for that matter was not an option. So, as I came into the small town of Goderich, Ontario I decided to just drive around and look for a beach. Without having a detailed map, this mostly amounted to “the lake is east of me, so I’m going to drive east until I drive into the lake”.
After a few dead ends, I did find a small park and beach along the lake. “What the hell is this big metal wall?” I asked myself before realizing that I was actually at a beach that doubled as a port and there were giant cargo ships docked next to the parking lot.
I walked across the cold, snowy beach and got a good look at Lake Huron which was still unfrozen - kind of rare for mid-January. Walking back to my car I realized that one of the ships, the Manitoulin was beginning to move. Absolutely incredible timing - just looking to score a view of Lake Huron to say that I saw it, I was able to watch a massive cargo ship leave the port from like five feet away.
As someone who has spent a lot of summers at the lake, I’ve always kind of wondered in a creepy way what it would be like to be out at sea and have a huge ship come cruising by. Well, this was about as close as I can get to fulfilling that sick fantasy. I tried to do a combination of snapping some photos and video while also just taking in the scene. Here I am, in Canada, at Lake Huron, watching a big cargo ship leave port. That’s something I’ve never been able to say before, and may never be able to say again. Who knows? But that’s all part of the magic of this time of the year, where I’m on the road every week to somewhere new to do something different.
All in the name of talking about the weather.
T-mobile is great for international travel (but not particularly great for central Illinois storm chasing)