Posted on 08/01/2002 7:12:10 AM PDT by T. P. Pole
Much of Wisconsin remained in the grip of sweltering heat Wednesday, ending a month in which Milwaukee saw the mercury reach 90 degrees nine different days, about the same number of days above 90 the state's largest city sees during a typical summer.
Even upstate, in Chippewa Falls, it got so hot Tuesday that a traveling load of yeast-filled pizza dough expanded, breaking out the back of a semitrailer truck and creating a 25- to 35-mile oozing, intermittent blob on Highway 29.
"We had everything from bread-loaf-size droppings to some that were about half the size of a car," said Sgt. James Barnier of the Wisconsin State Patrol, District 6 in Eau Claire.
"They used snowplows, shovels and pitchforks to get it off highway," Barnier said.
The dough spill was reported about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday and stretched from just west of Stanley to about five miles west of Chippewa Falls, said Lt. Tim Blizek of the Chippewa County Sheriff's Department.
The semi, which was not refrigerated, is owned by Endres Processing of Rosemount, Minn. It was hauling the dough from a Tombstone Pizza factory in Medford to a processing plant in Rosemount, where it was to be turned into animal feed, the state patrol's Barnier said.
"We were probably in the 90s yesterday and inside the metal container, not being refrigerated, I'm sure it was well over that," Barnier said Wednesday.
The Chippewa County Highway Department set up signposts to slow traffic along the highway during the roughly three hours it took to clean up the mess, Barnier said.
No accidents or injuries were reported as a result of the spill.
Endres Processing was cited for allowing a leaking load and failure to have an International Fuel Tax decal posted on the truck and was issued a warning ticket for an unregistered vehicle, Barnier said.
"They really should have hauled it in a refrigerated truck," he said.
The heat, while not record-breaking, has been persistent since the summer began cooking at 90 degrees June 1. Since then, the high temperature recorded at Mitchell International Airport has reached or exceeded 90 degrees 16 times, including nine days in the month of July.
In a typical summer, Milwaukee tops 90 degrees on nine or 10 days, said J.J. Wood, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sullivan.
Through Wednesday, the average temperature for July hovered just above 75 degrees, more than 3 degrees above normal. That higher average was caused in part by the warm nights that followed scorching days.
On both July 3 and July 21, the low temperature in Milwaukee tied the all-time highest low record, at 75 degrees on July 3 and 78 degrees on July 21.
Those higher temperatures will result in higher electric bills for residents and businesses relying on fans and air conditioning to keep cool. The number of cooling degree days for the summer, as recorded by the National Weather Service, reached 523 as of Wednesday afternoon. Normal is 336.
Cooling degree days are based on the average daily temperature compared with a base of 65 degrees. Each degree difference equals one cooling degree day.
"There has been strong demand on the system," said Margaret Stanfield, a spokeswoman for We Energies.
The utility has come close to its record electricity demand on a few days in July, but fell short of the record 6,298 megawatts measured at 2 p.m. Aug. 7, 2001.
There may be little comfort in this ongoing steam bath, except to consider this: It has been seven years since the Milwaukee temperature topped 100 degrees. That was on July 14, 1995.
I partially was posting this to show the stupidity of the global warming bias. Here we have a (quite funny) story about a truck dumping a load of pizza dough over a 25 mile stretch of highway that would stand as a story on its own. However, it is imbedded in a story about how hot it is in Wisconsin.
As if expanding pizza dough is a sign of global warming.
I thought we were able to discuss the media and its bias?
If it was my moose sausage comment that delegated this to chat, I don't mind it being removed and my global warming comments put in its place.
We've had a 20 year Summer here in Texas and today might make 100 degrees. Usually we are at 90 degrees by 0900. We've had 12 inches of rain in the Forth Worth area for July, and it just isn't supposed to rain in July.
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