Virtual weather

There was severe weather in the area today but I did not experience it. It was much darker than normal when I got up this morning but it stayed dry and I went to work. I will admit that there was the start of a sprinkle as I walked from my car in the parking lot to the building but it would have been barely enough to get me to give up on a ride, not really rain yet.

I work on the fourth floor of a completely sealed building so I could just as well be watching the weather on TV. After I got to my desk it looked like it was storming outside, but as I say, I did not experience it. It looked stormy for quite a spell and when the storming stopped it looked pretty wet.

By the time I left work I noticed that the parking lot was dry. On the way home the streets looked dry. I can only conclude that the bad weather was virtual weather, not at all real.

It is the last day of the month and I got enough miles to be satisfied with the month. I got more than the absolute required minimum, I got a few ticks more than the hoped for goal. I came up considerably short of the record for the month but as noted elsewhere, the record for July is skewed by the TRAM years. I came up over 200 miles short of July 2005, the last TRAM. But I got enough and I feel good.

My Roseville loop today took me through Falcon Heights and across Larpenteur to the farm campus. The sign above this display provided by the department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics says "Common Crops and Weeds in Minnesota". Here is my plant of the day.That healthy looking fella foreground left is leafy spurge.

Here's what Wikipedia says: "Leafy Spurge was transported to the United States possibly as a seed impurity in the early 1800s. First recorded from Massachusetts in 1827, Leafy Spurge spread quickly and reached North Dakota within about 80 years. It now occurs across much of the northern U.S., with the most extensive infestations reported for Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. It has been identified as a serious weed on a number of national parks and on reserves of The Nature Conservancy in eleven northern states. It is now classified as an invasive species by the United States Department of Agriculture."

I am guessing leafy spurge is not welcome amongst the prairie orchids in Glyndon.

I read Drunk Cyclist as much for his "link dumps" as anything. I really like this one: The website is down.