Relative needs to know about lightning . . . oh, and by the way . . .

 Thank heaven my week off is over. I’m exhausted. I need to get back to work and get some rest.

I’ve been doing yard work. I’ve been digging. I’ve been pruning. I’ve been potting. I’ve been moving rocks, rocks by the ton, I swear. I’ve been poisoning weeds like a Borgia getting rid of inconvenient relatives. Do not write or call to chastise me for using herbicides. The weeds were in the way of my plans for backyard domination. They had to die.

I’ve been to two baseball games, three, if you count Little League. I’ve been to two parties. I’ve cured the dog’s limp, although I’m pretty sure it was psychosomatic.

I even washed windows, for crying out loud. And I’ve had to wear real pants and real shoes every single day of the past week. Now I ask you, what kind of vacation is that?

In any event, it’s good to be back in the old bathrobe and at the keyboard again and back on a regular schedule of naps.

So let’s get down to what might be laughably described as work.

Can lightning travel sideways? My daughter-in-law insists that it can and does. By the way, I prefer to go bra-less and shoeless.

TMI. Too Much Information.

Madam, this may come as a surprise to you, but your undergarments and footwear, or lack thereof, hold little interest for me, at least in the present situation. Perhaps in other circumstances such details might be intriguing, but for now we shall confine ourselves to this business of your sideways-lightning question.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by lightning striking sideways.

Lightning does strike from cloud-to-cloud, depending on what kind of electrical charges those clouds have built up. That’s a kind of sheet lightning. I guess that would be sideways lightning.

Or do you mean that lightning might not always strike from straight-up, right-on-top-of-you? Like at a 90-degree angle to the earth?

Sure, why not? Lightning can hit you out of a clear blue sky from up to 10 miles away. I guess that would count as sideways, if that’s what you mean.

Now go put your shoes on.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com.

A no-reptile dinner, sure . . . a sub-100 summer? Forget about it

Friends, has this ever happened to you?

You’re out for a meal at a fine restaurant and suddenly you are attacked by a deadly reptile. Perhaps a crocodile that escaped from the circus or something like that.

Before you know it, you’re in the hospital being treated for a deadly venomous bite or shock or facing the possible amputation of a stricken limb. Or worse.

And your meal is ruined.

Well friends, I am happy to say I can personally guarantee you, and this is a vow I take on my blessed mother’s gray head, that the Red White & Brew at 6740 E. McDowell Road, Mesa, is 100 percent free of deadly reptiles.

And when you go there and order the Southwestern Mahi-Mahi Over Five Cheese Tortolloni for lunch or dinner any time this month, owner Ron Siegel will donate half the cost to Waste Not, and the folks at Waste Not will use that money to round up surplus food for our needy neighbors.

It’s part of Waste Not’s annual Celebrity Chef campaign, and to the best of my knowledge, no other participants have yet made a free-of-deadly-reptiles guarantee. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

So get out there before the month is over and order the official Valley 101 campaign meal and enjoy it free of fear from attack by deadly reptiles.

Has there ever been a summer when the temperature didn’t reach 100 degrees in the Phoenix area?

As far as I know, that has never happened since they started keeping records in 1895, and it probably would be kind of creepy if it ever did, wouldn’t it?

However, I suppose you should never say never. After all, there used to be mastodons and stuff like that in these parts, and those aren’t exactly hot-weather animals.

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OK, I’m going to take a few days off. I’ll be back next Sunday. I think I’ll do some work around the house and the yard or maybe go fishing. Or maybe I’ll try to set a new personal best for continuous time in my bathrobe and jammies. I like challenges.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8612.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com 

Ole Ben Franklin managed to put proper spin on nor’easter

Today’s question:

What are big storms like the one that hit the East Coast called nor’easters? My husband says it’s because they usually hit the northeast part of the country.

He’s wrong, but then knowing him as you no doubt do, this probably doesn’t come as a big surprise, does it?

A nor’easter – northeaster – is so named because of the direction of its winds.

A nor’easter often is formed by a cold storm that has moved though the Ohio Valley or Gulf states and then moves out over the Atlantic. When it does so, it picks up new strength from the warm ocean water.

The warm air rises and the cold air sinks and that creates a lot of instability in the upper atmosphere and an area of low pressure below.

The Earth’s rotation sets the storm spinning in a counterclockwise direction, hence the northeast winds, and typically it goes spinning up along the Atlantic Coast. That path means it is always sucking in more warm ocean air and water that combine with the colder air on land to keep the storm fueled.

As incoming air rises around the center of the storm, it gets carried off by the jet stream and that increases the speed of the incoming air. The faster the air moves, the faster the barometric pressure drops. In a really severe nor’easter, the pressure can drop 24 millibars in 24 hours. This is known as a “bomb cyclone.”

Nor’easters generally don’t have wind speeds as high as those in a hurricane, but they can last a long time – up to a week – before they finally blow themselves out.

People used to believe storms came from the direction of the winds. In other words, if the winds blew from the southwest, they thought that’s where the storm came from.

Benjamin Franklin never quite figured out the whole spin of the winds thing, but he began to suspect something was going on when a nor’easter hit Philadelphia and blocked his view of an eclipse. He later found out people in Boston saw the eclipse before the same storm hit there.

So he reasoned that even though the storm winds were from the northeast, the storm had started to the south.

*Clay Thompson writes for The Arizona Republic. You can read his column by going to www.azcentral.com