Permafrost Thawing

 ... will fuck us sideways.  Scientists are just now beginning to notice this and realize they ought to factor it into their models of climate change.  Which means those models will predict much worse futures than the already quite fucked ones in print.

Rainbow

We saw a rainbow while grocery shopping today.  Big and bright, and it was a double.  :D  Best rainbow we've seen in a long time.

Bats

Today the bats are very active.  Some years we have a lot, others years less.  I haven't seen many this year, but there are several out tonight. Probably they are chasing insects roused by the rain.  I couldn't hear them, though, because the crickets and cicadas are making an almighty racket out there.

Illinois has 13 native bat species. While it's impossible to identify them whirring overhead, I suspect these are big brown bats because they are pretty large for insectivores.