u/Acoustic_blues60

I had the good fortune to experience two nearly identical days of hot humid weather. (you say huh?) We had afternoon thunderstorms both days, and I saw an interesting behavior.

The nights before were relatively clear, as in no clouds. The mornings were both very humid - I went for a walk before the temps went up. In the afternoon when the clouds were building, I felt the humidity drop noticeably, although the temperatures were still quite high. Then the storms hit and cleared out.

The first day I was perplexed, but the second day was a repeat of the first, modulo the timing of the arrival thunderstorms.

What I was curious about was the mechanism that caused the humidity to drop as the storms started to build.

My hunch, which could be wrong, is the following. When I got up in the mornings, we had inversion caps going, which kept the humid air trapped. But as the day wore on and things heated up, the inversion caps went away and some fraction of the humid air went up into the sky, causing the humidity to drop.

The storms weren't terribly violent, but substantial. CAPE was 1000 the first day and 2100 the second day.

Changes due to construction can be difficult. In my commute in to Harvard Sq. today, I found that the path was closed east of Eliot Bridge. The problem was that the sign read "sidewalk closed" and didn't have any hint of how far or where to detour. The traffic lane was closed and a runner was on that, so I followed him, only to get chewed out by a construction worker. I told him that there was not clear signage of how to detour. His response was "it said 'sidewalk closed', what else to you want?"

Anyway, I think the path is probably closed from Eliot Bridge to JFK and you have to cobble something together on the north side of Memorial Drive on the sidewalks.

As an additional fun part of today, the rain was torrential with lots of flooding. Thankfully it was short-lived.

Maybe there's a birder out there who knows the answer to this. It's mainly an off-season observation, but it's puzzled me. When I say "off-season" - I mean when the southern migrators (laughing gulls, plovers, terns...) have left and northern migrators (loons, eider ducks) are in town. I see gulls that sit on the beach all facing the same way. I have no clue why they do this. I've imagined that perhaps they know a storm is brewing, but it doesn't correlate with that. I also imagined that maybe the wind is too high, but it doesn't seem to correlate with that either. So, why do they all sit down en masse and face the same direction?

I see this mostly on the large extended beach at the Wychmere Beach Club in Harwich Port, but gulls like to congregate there, as there seems to be good eating.

Edit: I guess I find the "aerodynamics to fly into the wind" an unsatisfying answer as the wind in these situations isn't terribly up and it doesn't explain the seasonality.

This is a shot in the dark and pretty random. I'm looking for a store that sells broccoli with long stems. Why? I cut up the stems as a substitute for potatoes in chowder (my wife has a sensitivity to potatoes). To my taste, it turns out a better chowder.

Most stores have broccoli crowns with relatively short stems, but there was a time in the past when stores carried broccoli with relatively long stems. Any places? My store in Harwich only carries broccoli crowns with very short stems.

And I'm just a visitor from Boston

There's a school being torn down on Crescent between Cherry and Ash. Does anyone know what might be going up in its place? I tried googling and came upon a zoning hearing about an apartment construction, but I think this is on the other side of Crescent on the Watch Factory side.