I give The Weather Guys mad props this morning for scooping me on blogging about the lightning strike on ABC's "Lost" last week -- I just wasn't thinking.

If you missed it, (spoilers below) the character "Desmond" on the show has recently picked up the useful talent of seeing the future -- and his first attempt to put this skill to use was to build a lightning rod next to Claire's tent so that it wouldn't be hit by lightning and possibly injure her or her baby. The Weather Guys had some useful comments about lightning rods [WikiPedia].

After my house was struck by lightning in 1987, my Dad built an alternative, which I guess was technically a lightning rod dissipater -- he extended a long metal cable over our house (and the shed that was struck) at a height of several feet. We haven't had any problems since then. (This recollection makes me want to scan in some more photos from that event -- if I have time tonight, I'll post them here).

So, in response to the WeatherGuys post, I'll discuss the less-exciting but nonetheless meteorologically notable episode of ABC's "Men In Trees" which aired on October 6 (OK, so I'm running a little behind on the taped shows). In episode S01E05 "Talk For Tat", the city of Elmo, Alaska suffered through a Fall heat wave which, based on the characters reactions, (including Marin who is from New York City) seemed to be over 90 degrees. Would this type of heat wave be possible that far north that time of year? Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we're talking about October. How can we figure this out?

First, we have to know where Elmo is, but, unlike the Simpsons, the show has not accumulated enough fan sites to find people pontificating on the specific location of the show's hometown. Elmo is obviously remote, of course that doesn't narrow it down much in Alaska. It is "a fishing town" so it's on the coast, but we're still talking about 20 degrees of latitude here. We can rule out lakes because the word "ocean" has been used several times. Well, since we can't pinpoint it, let's ask the climate question for three major cities spread across the state:

Homer, Alaska, on the southern shore (D'ohh! Simpsons reference!) [Google Map]
Nome, Alaska, about halfway up the west side [Google Map]
Barrow, Alaska, a remote northern sea town [Google Map]

Now we're ready to obtain some data from AccuWeather.com Premium. Typing in the city names above, then clicking on "Past Years" under "My Local Weather", I see a graph of record (pink) and actual/forecast (red) high temperatures for the month of October. In the case of Homer, official government records are not maintained for that station (D'ohh!) so we'll have to switch to Kodiak [Google Map], which is even farther south, on Kodiak Island, surely one of the warmest places in the state. The graph from Kodiak answers our question:

In all the years of records there, the temperature has barely pushed above 60 in October, surely not enough to make a New York City girl sweat. Graphs from Nome and Barrow are even worse, showing maxes of 59 and 43 respectively.

By the way, don't make the mistake that I almost did and assume the show is filmed in Alaska. Like many shows, it is filmed in the Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada area due to the scenic vistas and low operating expenses. Specifically, most of it is filmed in Squamish, which is just north of Vancouver. But those mountains in the show are huge, though, right? Well now that I think about it, I remember some episodes of The X-Files which showed similar scenes. And what's a few thousand feet? The highest mountain in BC is Mount Fairweather at 15,300 feet, versus Alaska's Mount McKinley at 20,320 feet. "Northern Exposure," a similar dramedy from the 1990's (which many people claim was the inspiration for "Men in Trees") featured less-impressive outside views and was filmed in Washington State.

Ironically, if you look at Vancouver temperatures in October, now we're talking -- they've hit 90 before... so maybe this heat wave was only on the set.

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