Outside the Box

There’s a gas war going on in Grand Rapids! That city had the lowest gas prices in all of Minnesota Friday morning, as low as $3.59 per gallon!!!
Meanwhile Duluth gas prices had fallen to as low as $3.79 per gallon for unleaded regular at several stations on Friday, down 20 cents in just five days!
Thats’ still higher than the statewide average which sat at $3.76 on Friday, according to minnesotagasprices.com. That’s down 17 cents over a week ago and down from amonth ago.

  The Duluth (and I-Falls) gas price ripoff continues.
  Duluth gas prices remained at $3.99.9 (unleaded regular) Monday while gas prices across the rest of the state are falling fast (some I-Falls stations were still at $4.09, the highest in the state!!!)
  Meanwhile, parts of central Minnesota are seeing gas for $3.67 per gallon Monday! That’s an incredible 32 cents less for each gallon than Duluth!!!
  Minnesotagasprices.com says the statewide average is now down to $3.84, while stations as close to Duluth as Grand Rapids are as low as $3.83. Towns just as far from refineries as IFalls were seeing gas for 40 cents or more per gallon less than the Falls!!
  When will this ripoff end? How much longer will Duluthians have to pay more than all of our neighbors? A few pennnies might be acceptable, but 32 cents per gallon?! That’s a ripoff. It’s the same gas.

Head west over to Detroit Lakes Monday and you’d be paying 25 cents less per gallon of gas than here in Duluth.
Why? The little town is having a gas price war, that’s why.
Somehow, the same gas station companies that are selling as in Duluth for $3.99 are selling it for $3.74 in Detroit Lakes.
Hmmm. Makes you wonder.
And why doesn’t Duluth ever have a gas price war? Bemidji ($3.77 on Monday) has them. Hibbing. Grand Rapids. And all those towns generally have cheaper gas than much larger Duluth.
Cloquet-area drivers are paying just (just!) $3.81 per gallon on Monday. Almost worth the drive to fill up there. Almost.
Duluthians also are paying a 10 cent permium over the statewide average of $2.89.09 per gallon of unleaded regular gas, according to Minnesotagasprices.com. But we are 8 cents below the national average price per gallon.

   Probably not, but the first half of June 2008 was about as wet as it gets in the Northland.           

  There was at least a trace of rain EVERY DAY over the first 15 days of the month, including measurable rain 11 of 15 days.
So far this month Duluth has seen 4.21 inches of rain, thats more than usual for the whole month and 2.2 inches above normal for halfway through the month.
   Duluth is now 1.32 inches above normal for precipitation for the year.
All remnants of the 2006-2007 drought have now been wiped out.

   We look to have a week of nice weather, with highs near 80 by Thursday, according to the National Weather Service in Duluth.

   Good grass growing weather.

   
    Gas topped $4 per gallon for what appears to be the first time ever in Minnesota on Sunday when it hit $4.09.9 per gallon for regular unleaded at a station in Winthrop, a small farm town west of the Twin Cities, according to minnesotagasprices.com..
    Several northern Minnesota stations still hovered at $3.99.9 per gallon Sunday, although, in an odd twist, Bemidji had the cheapest gas in the state at $3.71 per gallon.
    Regular unleaded ranged from $3.83 to $3.89 in Duluth.  The website reported the statewide average at about $3.86 per gallon.

  Folks in International Falls were paying
$3.99.9 per gallon for unleaded regular Wednesday, on the brink of the
mythical, awful $4 per gallon gas so long predicted, according to
www.minnesotagasprices.com.

The statewide average Wednesday was $3.84
while the national average sat at $3.98. Gas in some Minnesota cities was as cheap as $3.74.  In Duluth
it was averaging about $3.85 on Wednesday, down fro the $3.90s last week.

  Will we
all be paying $4 and more soon? It depends on who you listen to. But it almost
surely will happen if there is any escalation in violence in the Mideast, a pipeline
malfunction anywhwere or even a rumor of a hurricane in the Gulf of
Mexico.

  And
if $4 comes, can $5 be far behind?

 Deer across the Northland are beginning to drop their fawns and folks are reminded to leave them alone. People often stumble across newborn fawns that appear abandoned. In reality, the doe is somewhere nearby, likely eating. They always return to find their fawns.
    Unless you obviously see the doe is dead nearby, such as a car collision, leave the animal alone. It will be fine. If you feel you must report it, call your local DNR wildlife office or conservation officer.
    Meanwhile, some of those does can be quite aggressive in protecting their fawns. Conservation Officer Kipp Duncan reports this week that a Duluth area resident complained of an overly aggressive doe that attacked the familys dog and attacked a woman as she was trying to retrieve the morning paper from the mailbox.
Give deer their space this time of year.

    Is $3.75 a gallon gas too expensive for the fishing boat? One angler recently
complained to Minnesota Conservation Officer Scott Staples in Carlton County
that he was going to park the boat and fish from shore instead.
    Staples said the guys plan was to park the boat in the front yard, fill
it with dirt and plant flowers in it.

None
of the official meteorologists will go out on this limb, but I say it looks
like the last threat of frost will pass Wednesday morning in and around Duluth. So go ahead and
start planting!! (Hey, its not my money!)

Our remarkably cool spring seems finally ready
to concede to more summerlike temperatures. Low temperatures are forecast to be
mostly in the 40s and maybe even 50s in the coming week, with highs actually
into the 70s for more than a couple days.

This
isnt that far off the normal for a last frost for our area.

The 1971 to 2000 "safe date’ for the last frost in Duluth proper is May 25.
But its later just outside Duluth
and away from the lake, May 29. It’s later still, June 5, across much of the northland. And its much later up in the deep freeze of north-central St. Louis
County where the last frost comes, on average, on June 25! (Those are the dates after which the State Climatology Office says theres only a 10 percent chance of frost, or 90 percent chance of no frost. The median date for  last frost is much earlier, but the median date still holds a 50 percent chance of frost afterward.)

Bonus blog item: The summer-long forecast
from the National
Climate Prediction
Center is calling for a
normal June-July-August for the Northland. Theres no significant variability seen
for temperature or rain. The Northland is just east of a dry area and just
north of a cool area.

  Minnesota Conservation officer Gary Sommers
who patrols the woods and waters near Walker on Leech Lake, reports this week that
he recently got a strange request from a local citizen who asked for permission
to shoot a nuisance pheasant out of season.

  When Sommers asked how the pheasant was a nuisance,
the landowner said it was crowing incessantly at about 4:40 a.m. every day waking
him up. The guy also reported hearing tapping noises in his basement window
where the pheasant was trying to peck at bugs behind the screen. The rooster
eventually tore the screens off.

   But then the landowner made his mistake. He
admitted having fed the rooster all winter so it would stick around but that now
he had enough of the obnoxious bird and wanted to off him.

 Sommers had two words for the guy: Permission
denied.