If you know any thing about me, know that I love it that we take road trips that are a bit different The trip, just shy of 8 hours, makes it’s biggest turn at Cedar Rapids. Has that ever happened? I don’t think so! It’s a 491 mile trek, covering 3 states at a pace of about 62mph. And we get to see Cedar Rapids!
Columbia, Missouri
Low pressure spinning over the mountains is going to sink deeper to the southern Plains. The light rain showers that are threatening the Upper Midwest are going to be drawn south to the more organized region of instability in Texas by the time we would depart tomorrow. The weather will get less cloudy and potentially a few degrees warmer as we head to eastern Wisconsin.
I am writing up this road trip forecast in the midst of a road trip that has gone awry. I got a flat tire and bent a rim after taking a mountain corner a little too wide, and am stuck until I can get my car fixed. I’m kind of along this route, though, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, so maybe that will help with the forecast. We will be able to cover the ground in one long day, and the route — south of Spartanburg — will be 599 miles long. Maybe it’s just me without a car, but it does seem like the pace here is slow, so 63.5mph, even when using interstates, sounds about right. Keep your eyes on the road!
Huntsville, Alabama
Late this weekend, rain really started to pick up along a stretch from western North Carolina to north Georgia, clearly induced by the ocean sided exposures of the Appalachians. The surface trough helping to enhance the onshore flow and subsequent rain is going to consolidate and shift off the mid-Atlantic coast towards Hurricane Earl. This will bring a slight reprieve in the showers from Huntsville to about Madison, Georgia. The threat for rain has continued to be minimal for much of South Carolina and central Georgia, though with the trough in place, the stretch from Columbia eastward stayed drier anyways. Mostly cloudy skies are likely, and after the threat for spotty showers ends around Madison, we should see dry pavement on to Wilmington.
This road trip will be a little bit longer than our intra-Michigan trek yesterday, but it will still take only a day. We’ll cover 619 miles in just over 9 hours, as we skirt Chicago and pass through Des Moines into an underrated town. I think sometimes cities compensate for being in “boring” areas by being extremely interesting. Omaha is certainly interesting, and I would recommend a visit some day.
Battle Creek, Michigan
While today in Michigan is pretty nice (even though I got the road trip backwards! It was supposed to be Jackson to Battle Creek! I digress) there is a weak perturbation moving through the Upper Midwest that will change all that. Excepect some scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms to roll in to the area tomorrow evening, which means we will intercept on the way to Omaha. There will be a chance of these pop up showers – very few and far between – on the south side of Chicago, with the tail of the boundary stationary through southern Iowa. leading to scattered showers mostly south of I-80. Again, even if we see any rainshowers among the corn and Chicago traffic, they will be short lived. Potentially heavy, but short lived. Omaha is great, though, and shouild be drier than points eas.t.
It is not a long drive that we intend to take tomorrow through Lower Michigan. It’s less than an hour and 53 miles from Battle Creek to Jackson. The Google Maps pace is 60mph, but I’ve driven I-94 in Michigan. We’ll be going faster than 60mph.
Battle Creek, Michigan
There really isn’t a lot to say here, honestly. Michigan is a nice enough state, and there are a surprising number of wineries. Not a lot of weather coming through, though. There is high pressure over the Great Lakes, with some mid layered overcast in the northern part of the lakes, but we are on the south side of Michigan, so just enjoy Jackson, I guess!
This is an interesting trip to me, one that will cover 3 days and 1,639 miles. We’re hitting a lot of open territory. Big Sky Country, as some have called it. We’ll carry a pace of 65.6mph and break the trip into 524.5 mile segments, with a little extra for day three. Drive fast, the speed limit allows it!
DAY ONE (Saturday)
(May 17, 2006 Grand Forks, ND) Ð Aerial view of Grand Forks mitigation project building new levee walls, burns and pumping stations protecting the city from the Red River.
Photo by Brenda Riskey/UND
A surface wave centered over Minnesota is kicking up light rain all throughout Minnesota, encroaching on the Red River. High pressure is going to strengthen and squash the disturbed weather to the southeast. It’s going to be a little chilly, relatively speaking, to start the day, but it should warm quickly in western North Dakota. Eastern Montana will be sunny and warm, and in honor of the drive on Saturday, and the rest of the journey to come, we will stop in Miles City, Montana.
DAY TWO (Sunday) Eastern Montana is wide open pastures and prairies, and becomes mountainous around Butte and Helena. We’ll run into showers and thunderstorms right here, where the prairies run into the Rocky Mountains. The storms will be widely scattered and may even be dry, and when we start getting to western exposures around Missoula and westward, the threat will significantly lessen. We’ll make it to the Clark Fork River Crossing near Tarkio for the end of the night.
DAY THREE (Monday) Another shorth wave is moving ashore Sunday night, and some more of those spotty, potentially dry storms in the chimney of Idaho. It’s going to be dry after that in the Pacific Northwest. Fortunately, the Gulf of Alaska gyre is reforming, but for the time being, sit’s still hot in the Pacific Northwest
It takes merely one day to travel from New Haven, to Baltimore. In fact, it’s only 5 hours between the cities by car (even faster by train!) and covers 5 states. That’s a state an hour! At most times, it is a 5 hour and 7 minute drive (though significantly longer in the morning ore early evening) at a pace of only 52 miles an hour. That is CRAZY slow. This is the first time I can remember passing through Delaware on a trip, so I will blame the First State. We have 267 miles to cover, so let’s start coverin’
New haven, Connecticut
It’s the same story everywhere, man. Hot, hot, hot. Make sure that AC is working, especially in the midst of cutting across the Bronx on I-95 early in the day. Being at a standstill just makes things seem so much worse. The best chance for rain tomorrow is before we wake in the New York City area, but I suspect the green showing on the models will manifest as some ground fog thanks to high dew points in the area. The sun will get brighter and angrier as we slide through New Jersey and Delaware, before we begin our final steamy approach to Baltimore.
We’re off on… what’s this, a single day road trip? Well, this journey will take the better part of the day, covering 469 miles of pure Midwest. The pace in the end will be 62.3mph, slowed, as you might expect, by the city of Chicago.
Saginaw, Michigan
Man, it is hot in the Upper Midwest, and some of that heat is going to spread eastward. And don’t even get me started on the humidity. Air conditioners will be needed, particularly after we get away from the westerly flow off of Lake Michigan. Chicago westward through Illinois and into Deubuque will be blazing hot. The moisture is currently penned west of the Mississippi and north into Wisconsin, and there isn’t really a great reason to expect it to get unleashed terribly far from where it is right now. It will probably bleed south and east a bit, precariously close to our route, but all that will mean is an even more uncomfortable walk to the rest rooms at pit stops. Dubuque is going to be extremely sweaty tomorrow afternoon.
Cross country road tripping is the name of the game today, as we start on a 5 day journey. It is a 2,607 mile voyage which we will cover at a pace of 68.6mph, which is indicative of all the freeway time we are spending. That means a 549 mile a day pace for days 1-4, with a shorter drive to finish things off thanks to our blistering pace.
DAY ONE (Friday)
Napa, California
Low pressure over the Gulf of Alaska is pretty much just hanging out in place, and a cold front is becoming mostly stationary in the Pacific Northwest. This is all good news for people chugging along I-80, as we will be on Friday. It will make it hard to leave Napa, though, but driving through Sacramento and Reno will be a bit easier. Our drive will take us to Death Star Valley. Ope, sorry, Star Wars fan. That should be the Deeth/Starr Valley exit in northeastern Nevada.
DAY TWO (Saturday) The drive through the west will take its typical winding path through Salt Lake City then continue on into Wyoming. There isn’t a lot going on… BUT WAIT! There is a hint that the monsoon might be getting organized by this weekend. If that happens, there is an extremely remote chance at an isolated storm popping up over south central Wyoming by the end of the day. We’ll end the day at Cooper Cove, north of Laramie for our Saturday night stop.
DAY THREE (Sunday) Lee troughing is going to be fast in developing over central Nebraska, ready to turn towards the Upper Midwest, but it won’t tap into much moisture until it is closer to the Great Lakes. Surface high pressure will be in rapid pursuit, with some convergence and resultant thunderstorms over the Panhandle late in the day. We will already be in Ashland, about 30 miles before Omaha, when the day is through.
DAY FOUR (Monday) The next big storm is going to be brewing in the northern High Plains by the beginning of next week. A warm front may be expressed with a few spotty showers from Omaha to Cedar Rapids, but it certainly won’t be a cumbersome delay or terribly heavy precipitation. Dry air — well, rain free air — will be the name of the game for the rest of the drive to the Granger/Mishawaka area on the east side of South Bend, Indiana. It’s going to be hot and humid, so finding a place with a pool, or at least functioning air conditioning, will be a priority.
DAY FIVE (Tuesday) Expect to finish strong, especially through Ohio, where it should be mostly cloudless. There will be a line pretty near the border with Pennsylvania where clouds will become more likely. Pittsburgh and Johnstown look to be in a bit of a damming situation, which means temperatures are going to be noticeably cooler than those that we will arrive from.
It seems as though any trip through California usually takes a full week, so I am delighted that our trip this weekend is only a 3 day trek across the desert southwest. The pace of the 1,597 mile journey will be about 68mph, owing in large part to I-10. This will give us almost 544 miles a day, with a slightly shorter day to end things on Sunday. Memorial Weekend is a good time for a road trip.
DAY ONE (Friday)
Oxnard, California
It’s fire season already in southern California. Despite copious snow and fairly persistent rain patterns through the winter, it wasn’t enough to break the drought that has plagued the southwest for a long time now. While there is a fire near Laguna Beach, the route through southern California will be free of fire, though pollution is a bit high in the LA Basin. The better threat for new fires under the dry high pressure will be in northern Arizona towards the 4 Corners. Despite the drought, day 1 looks good to Tucson.
DAY TWO (Saturday) Low pressure will start to develop in the High Plains of Colorado this weekend, which will likely fan the flames of the Black Fire in New Mexico, which will make the route from Deming, New Mexico to Pecos, Texas a little hazy. The fire may advance towards our route on Saturday, though it won’t come anywhere near it. The prevailing winds will only make life grayer, however. We will make it past Pecos to Pyote for the day.
DAY THREE (Sunday) Low pressure is going to track to the northeast after developing in the Colorado prairies. It’s not going to be able to pull any moisture north, at least not enough that the atmosphere will destabilize in Texas, even as a weak cold front tries to move through. Eventually, it will turn into an inactive dry line west of Dallas-Fort Worth. This will pen any smoke from filtering eastward, but showers and storms are not in the forecast for the rest of the way to Tyler.
Before I got the map for this trip, I wondered if it would take us through the Twin Cities or the Upper Peninsula, and it turns out, it was neither. It’s going to be a one day trip that takes us 627 miles and right through Chicago. The route through rural Wisconsin, followed by the decidedly not rural Chicago will slow us down to a 61mph pace, but that’s ok because we are getting it all done in one day.
Duluth, Minnesota
I found what might be the least attractive angle of Duluth I could, just because the intent is to leave this fine city for Indiana. We will be between systems as we set forth tomorrow, which makes for a much easier drive. A warm front lifting north ahead of the next feature coming eastward will touch off some late showers or convention (probably convection, frankly) in northern Wisconsin. We will likely steer clear of the wet weather before it initiates, and will only deal with a hot, stuffy traffic jam late in the afternoon in Chicago, before we trundle on in to Kokomo.
