Drove an hour and a half through pouring rain and lightning early Tuesday to get my daughter to gymnastics camp in Perham, MN.  Went to where we thought it was being held, only to enounter a major road construction mess made worse by the rain… and people scurrying back to their cars.  Must be somewhere else.  Found our way to the right spot…  only to stand in line and discover my daughter didn’t seem to be registered.  Hmmm… getting frustrated.  Why wasn’t she on the list and why didn’t I know about the change in location?  After asking a few questions and searching my foggy brain, discovered that it was all on me.   I’d probably forgotten to register her.  Confirmed it when I returned home to find the registration form, fully filled out, but buried under a bunch of other papers.

Feel the same way about the Bike MS event this weekend.  Thought I had weeks, even months, to train and fundraise.  But after a couple of football and basketball camps, several out of town track meets for the kids and a high school reunion, the time has flown by and it’s here!  Time to raise money and time to pedal!

I am by nature a tardy person.  I’m always playing my own little game of beat the clock.  I can get this or that done right quick, before I have to do this and that.  I don’t intend to appear insensitive to others when I’m late, although I realize that’s often the end result.  I partially blame TV news, where we’re always trying to do things up to the last minute.

So pardon my last minute attempt to raise money for the MS Society this weekend.   A couple hundred riders are going at least 150 miles over two days, starting in north Fargo, looping through a good chunk of Cass county, and ending in north Fargo both days.  Money donated goes to help people with MS… a difficult disease that affects far too many people here in the upper midwest.

So if you’re so inclined, can you please help?  Just click on my donation page on the right…

Will take your donations, even up to the last minute

Robin

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NBC prime time programming will be available, at its regularly scheduled times, on Channel 11.2 for the next three weekends. This weekend (March 4, 5 & 6) it will be Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, the following weekend (March 13 & 14) it will be Friday and Saturday nights, and the next weekend (March 18, 19 & 20) it will be Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We chose to use 11.2 for the NBC shows this year, rather than tape-delaying them, because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find places to run the pre-empted programs. NBC will not allow us to cover any other network programming, including its late night programming, with delayed broadcast of another NBC show.
If you have a digital television or converter box, and are receiving channel 11.1 over the air, just re-scan for channels and 11.2 will show up.
If you are a Cable One customer and have a digital box, it’s on channel 466.
If you’re passing the Cable One signal straight into your Digital TV’s tuner, you should find it on channel 70.466. If you are a MidContinent subscriber, it’s on channel 166. It is also on the following cable systems: CSI, Jamestown & Valley City, Ch. 12; Central Dakota/Daktel, Ch. 108; Polar Communications, Ch. 109; Halstad Telephone, Ch. 12; United Telephone, Ch.33; Sjoberg’s Cable, Ch. 511;Garden Valley Telephone, Ch. 16; Charter Communications (effective March 8), Ch. 391; Barnesville Municipal Cable, Ch. 88; Wikstrom Cable, Ch. 69; Bagley Public Utilities, Ch. 42; Vision Systems, Ch. 11.2 (call your operator with questions); MLGC Cable, Ch. 11.2 (call your operator for instructions).
ThisTV will also be available, soon, on Dickey Rural Cable and North Dakota Telephone Cable– call your provider for more information.This TV is not available on either Dish Network or DirecTV, but– depending on where you live– you may be able to receive a signal on 11.2 with an indoor antenna. Alternatively, most NBC programs are available for free on NBC.com after they’ve aired on television.
Charley Johnson
General Manager
KVLY & KXJB-TV

With little sign of anything warmer than 5-10 degrees below average temperature for the next week or so, let’s take a look at how long it should take us to get to 60°. Believe it or not, our average temperature on April 24th is 60°…that’s only eight weeks away!

So with any luck we’ll begin to feel the heat as winter slowly fades away (but not too much heat to spark off the floods).

-Meteorologist Hayley LaPoint

Tuesday, NASA released a blockbuster claim that 2009 tied for the second warmest year in recorded history! And Wednesday, NOAA details the warming we’ve seen in January 2010. While the majority of the United States was unequivocably cold, the majority of the world was very warm (or hot in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer).

Here are some excerpts. You can read the entire story here.

Global Highlights

• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20^th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). This is the fourth warmest January on record.
• The global land surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.83°C (1.49°F) above the 20^th century average of 2.8°C (37.0°F)—the twelfth warmest January on record. Land areas in the Southern Hemisphere were the warmest on record for January. In the Northern Hemisphere, which has much more land, comparatively, land surface temperatures were 18^th warmest on record.
• The worldwide ocean surface temperature for January 2010 was the second warmest—behind 1998—on record for January, 0.52°C (0.94°F) above the 20^th century average of 15.8°C (60.5°F). This can be partially attributed to the persistence of El Niño across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC), El Niño is expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere spring 2010.

In the Fargo area according to the NWS monthly climate data:

 JANUARY 2010 AT FARGO BEGAN EXTREMELY COLD WITH A RECORD MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 33 BELOW SET ON THE 2ND…A DEGREE COLDER THAN THE 32 BELOW SET IN 1885. TEMPERATURES MODERATED AFTER THE FIRST WEEK AND ENDED UP AVERAGING 8.4 DEGREES WHICH IS 1.6 DEGREES WARMER THAN NORMAL.

What are you thinking?? Are you a climate change believer?

-Meteorologist Hayley LaPoint

Almost everyone I talked to today out at the Kiwanis Pancake Feed was really concerned about spring flooding. Of course since I’m a meteorologist, I usually get the questions and concerns about the weather. Well, the Valley News Live Weather team has a great series for you to check out- and it’s all about flooding. Tune in for the next four Sunday nights at 10 pm. We’ll tell you about the latest flood information and break down what factors really go into making a record breaking flood. This week we’re talking about soil moisture… and how much liquid is really under all this snow. In the weeks to come, we’ll tell you about a snow cover survey flight we went on and the latest National Weather Service forecast (which comes out on Friday).

So, don’t forget! Sunday’s at 10pm on Valley News Live!

Oh, and check this out!! Snow cover is all 48 continental states… crazy.

Courtesy: NOAA

-Meteorologist Hayley LaPoint