A few days ago I noticed that it had been so persistently rainy that the cottonwood fluff collecting in a gutter was starting to germinate.

I just flipped through our local station's record to update my 2023-24 freeze counter. The season started early and finished late, beginning with a low of 32F on 10/26, and ending with a low of 31F on 4/17. Some other notable highlights including... -The final total came to 40 low temperatures below freezing, on the dot, rounding up from 0.5F. Pretty close to normal. Pretty amazing for a strong El Niño. -Unusually, most of our freezes were not related to the inversion season, but rather favorably timed deep onshore flow regimes in both the late Fall and early Spring, as well as direct arctic air advection in mid January and mid February. Monthly Recaps: -The late October cool spell introduced the season officially, though the date at which it began was nothing exceptional. September 2019 actually holds the record here for earliest freeze, with a low of 31F on the 30th. What was exceptional was the depth of that October cold wave, tallying six lows below freezing to close out the month, three of which in the 20s, bottoming out at 27F on the 28th. -November brought eleven freezes in two chunks, the most substantial of them being the last seven days of the month, where we saw a lengthy inversion pattern, involving more than a week without rain and persistent fog. The skies managed to clear out for a pair of 25F lows on the 27th and 28th to set the monthly low. -December was mostly a dud of a month, grabbing a small pile of four freezes, strewn about here and there. The quality of our diet was subpar to say the least, there even being one only in part because even when you're clouded up for most of the day, with sixteen whole hours of darkness, you're bound to decouple once or twice. About seven more near-misses of 34F or less rubs it all in. -January, the elephant in the room, features to no one's surprise the lowest temperature of the season by a landslide, notching an impressive 14F (technically 13.6F), the lowest temperature I've ever felt under a mixed low level thermal profile. This month nabbed eight freezes in total, five of which were in the teens. It also included three high temperatures below freezing, the coldest day of the season arriving on the 13th with a 23.0/13.6 spread. Top tier. -February may not have been as unmitigated a torch as December, but with rapidly decreasing insolation, the count matches the same, adding up to an additional four freezes, thanks to splitty Niño weather persisting for much of the beginning and middle of the month. We were technically grazed by the periphery of an Arctic lobe that slammed into the north plains in mid February, though it was a shallow intrusion, and was only reflected by dewpoints in the teens, as well as a low of 28F on the 16th to set the low for the month. -March finished tame as well, after a brief cold onshore flow pattern rung in the month with three freezes, all of which were in the 20s; the lowest of this stretch and the month being a 26.8F low on the 6th. Cloudy weather prevented us from taking advantage of those final long Winter nights once northwesterlies ceased, and after one more stray low of 32F on pi day, that was all she wrote. -Fast forward a month and three days to the 17th of April, a well timed trough at the end of the season managed a low of 31.1F. Number forty. -May almost added another one with a low of 35.2F on the first. There is some outside potential by that point but most years don't make it down to freezing, this year being no exception.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s Mount Ibu erupted three times on Thursday, spewing red lava and clouds of grey ash. No injuries were reported. The volcano, located on an island in the eastern North Maluku province, has been erupting almost every day since early May. Authorities have raised the alert to the highest level as the number of eruptions and deep volcanic earthquakes have significantly increased. Thursday’s eruptions sent ash clouds up to 1,200 meters (4,000 feet) into the air, said Muhammad Wafid, chief of Indonesia’s Geology Agency.

There’s going to be no official heatwave down here. We probably won’t even get to 90, highest day forecasted is tomorrow getting to 88.

Not assuming anything, you've made a myriad of posts about the U.S. roasting this summer, and the vast majority have cited seasonal models - just like today's. But I know you also have your own independent reasons.