Today’s cover shot is of the waxing May moon that will be full again on June 3! Any guesses on what this one is called?
Of course, it will look full all weekend and with any luck we’ll have fairly ‘average’ temperatures to enjoy it. Here’s a look at what kind of temperatures June normally brings:
Also in our June skies you’ll find Mars and Venus in the evenings with Mercury and Jupiter before sunrise. Here’s more on the planet sightings from EarthSky.org. As for meteor showers, don’t count on much. There are some very minor sparks in the sky, but you’ll be one of the few to see anything. Here’s a great list of meteor showers from the American Meteor Society.
We can get an occasional June front to come though and we also can get that occasional June tropical storm! We’ll keep an eye out for either! The Climate Data Center gives us odds of having a fairly average month both in temperatures and rainfall:
Average rainfall for June is 3.71″. Many of you recall the two tropical storm Allisons -- one showed up the first summer I moved here in 1989 which dropped 15-20″ of rain (that first “Allison” was the storm name that replaced “Alicia” from 1983, by the way). The second tropical storm Allison to make trouble arrived June 8-9, 2001, and poured 36-42″ of rain on the city overnight. The National Hurricane Center retired Allison as a storm name -- the first time to retire a tropical storm name, in fact, rather than a full-blown hurricane.
We are already watching and tracking a disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico as we end May and begin June.
On a lighter note, June is also the month of weddings, birthdays (for some of us!), and first dips in the pool. Galveston’s ArtWalk is this Saturday, June 3, and June 1 is National Dinosaur Day. There’s something for everyone, right? Whatever you have going on, enjoy!
Frank
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