What is going on? Things are totally wacky lately.

And, I am not talking about President Trump or the U.S. Congress. Although wacky is a perfectly good word for them, too.

No, I am talking about the weather. The weather both here in Faribault County, and elsewhere around the country, as well.

This is August right? Late August? The Minnesota State Fair has started, for crying out loud. School is around the corner. Last minute summer vacations are happening.

It should be terribly hot and extremely humid in August in Southern Minnesota.

My air conditioner should be running nonstop. I should be waiting in anticipation for the one day when there is a break in the heat and I can feel as though fall will be arriving soon. That usually happens on the day the Blue Earth Area Buccaneers play their first football game of the year. Which is this Thursday, by the way.

And, it should be dry this time of year. We should be praying for rain. We should be watering the plants and flowers in our yards at least once per day to keep them alive. Maybe twice a day. My lawn should be dry, brown and crunchy. I should not have had to mow for the last couple of weeks.

But, none of this is true for this year.

I haven’t run my air conditioner since I can’t remember when. My last billing statement from Blue Earth Light and Water was the lowest for a summer month, ever. My windows are open in my house day and night and it is pleasant inside and outside.

It has been raining a lot. I can’t remember the last time we had to water the flowers in our yard (and there are a lot of them to water) because God is watering them all the time for us.

And brown and crunchy? Nope, my lawn is green and lush and I have to mow it at least once a week. In August.

Oh, I remember we had some really hot days back in June. It even hit the 90s. And there was a dry period back in July when my lawn got a little dry and the ground was hard and we had to water the flowers.

But August, the month we expect to be hot and dry, has been very nice.

Like I said, it is wacky.

Luckily the rainy weather didn’t bother the county fair or summer celebrations too much. Sure, there were a few times it rained but nothing too serious.

Well, except for maybe that solar eclipse party in Blue Earth last week, which was sponsored by the Blue Earth Community Library.

It was warm and sunny when it started at 11 a.m. And, they had 250 people show up. They ran out of solar eclipse glasses by 11:15 and ran out of food before noon.

When the eclipse started, the folks there could see the beginning of it, when the moon first starts to cover the sun, for about 11 minutes, but by noon clouds moved in and obscured the view.

By 1 p.m., although you couldn’t see the full solar eclipse, it was getting dark, then really dark. Now, some of that was due to the eclipse and some was because of the storm clouds moving in.

Soon it was pitch black with thunder and lightening. And while in other areas across the country the moon slowly moved across the sun and it started to get brighter, it never did in Blue Earth, as the dark clouds and rains came and stayed for the rest of the afternoon.

I got to thinking about those people who lived hundreds of years ago, and how they feared a solar eclipse and thought it was the end of times.

It felt that way here in Blue Earth on solar eclipse Monday as it got dark as midnight, the street lights came on and the thunder rumbled the windows.

It was a little bit wacky.

Luckily, the next morning, Tuesday, it was a sunny, bright and beautiful August day.

Yes, a beautiful day in August. Who would have thunk it. Not hot, not humid, just nice.

The weather has been wacky all across the country this summer, as well as here in Southern Minnesota. Excessive heat in the West and Southwest, more tornadoes than normal in the Midwest and South. And lots of storms and rain along the Gulf and East coasts.

In fact, with Hurricane Harvey hitting the Texas Coast this weekend, there are some astounding predictions of 130 mph wind, 12-foot surf surges and rain.

Lots of rain. One prediction for Corpus Christi, Texas, calls for 35 inches of rain over the weekend. That is nearly three feet of rain.

For whatever reason, the weather in the U.S. seems to have been a bit wacky almost everywhere.

But, I will take this kind of wacky August weather in Minnesota every year.

Even if it means I keep on mowing.