On Kansas weather ... I've lived here 35 years now in Salina (110 miles due
west of Topeka) and when I worked at the newspaper here I kept its weather
records. (I was also a weatherman as a young lad in the Navy.)
You really don't want to come to Kansas in August! 7 or 8 degrees? Try
20-25. It's an oven, and tornado season too. The hottest days in Kansas come
in August, which is also statistically the wettest month. This year was
kinda brutal, I did a few events this year in 100+ weather including a KC
Divisional at the end of July. Exhausting (makes for bad tempers too).
September is normally a wonderful month. Cools dramatically from August but
often still shirtsleeve weather. Today it's lovely outside. The rain we had
this year was unusual in such a short amount of time, and we have never had
a Nationals delayed 2.5 hours before for weather at any site, so that was an
anomaly. More, it was like the season changed overnight -- Tuesday's rain
was summertime stuff, Thursday's was autumn.
Next year's Runoffs are moving back to mid-October at Heartland Park, same
place as our Solo Nationals in '06. The reason for that -- well, the reason
the Runoffs at Mid-Ohio were crammed up to the end of September was to get
out of the crappy weather in Ohio in mid-October. Mid-October was fine at
Road Atlanta, but Ohio is so much farther north (and Mid-O is more northern
Ohio) that they were freezing their bunnies off. Even had snow once. Here in
Kansas it's much nicer at that period, hence the move back to the more
traditional Runoffs dates.
That in turn allowed the Solo Nationals to move down two weeks. SCCA staff
will now have a couple of weeks between the two championship events instead
of their being back to back. That means things don't get quite so frantic
and rushed, ultimately of benefit to all competitors. Yes, schools start
here in August, after Labor Day in other parts of the country, and our
current Solo dates have meant parents were coming here right when their kids
were just getting settled in school. Much easier to leave them, or take them
out of school, after a couple more weeks have passed. It also opens
everyone's calendar a couple more weeks. You can do that Labor Day special
event knowing you don't have to get ready for Topeka the following week (or,
you'll have time to fix what broke on the car).
For Sept. '06 the old adage of "pack two bags, a hot bag and a cold bag"
still applies. You may use more out of your cold bag but you don't need to
bring the parka. It can still get into the 90s then, and overnight lows can
dip into the 40s but 60s are the norm. There's generally less rain, and what
there is tends to be steady rain (a la Thursday), which means more
consistent autox surface not one that is changing dramatically minute by
minute. When I put my wets on Thursday morning, I got my wish that I would
not have to be scrambling to go back to drys mid-heat.
All that, of course is based on statistical averages and norms and is no
guarantee of any specific conditions on any specific date. For example, it
is normal in Kansas in summer to get wild thunderstorms that last an hour or
more, but they are not always present. The chance of any one storm in Kansas
missing you is several times greater than the chance of it hitting you, but
over the summer you'll probably get hit sometime. South Topeka just happened
to catch one at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
--Rocky Entriken
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