It looks like we’ve reached the peak of our temperature curve for the week. Wednesday will still be quite warm with mostly sunny skies (although some high clouds could come up from the south due to a weak low pressure center in northern Baja), but as the week goes on, the ridge of high pressure over the Great Basin will get nudged out slowly by a cold trough of low pressure dropping out of the Gulf of Alaska. High temperatures will fall from the upper 80s Wednesday to the mid-80s Thursday, the upper 70s Friday and the mid-60s through the weekend. Winds will also pick up and be gusty Thursday through Saturday.

Yesterday I mentioned water in S-traps in your plumbing blocks pipe odors from getting into your house. But water draining down the pipes would siphon out that water in the S-trap unless there is a vent to break that siphon. So vent pipes are tied in to the drainage system and are run up through the roof. Vent pipes stay dry, and are the only free opening your plumbing system has to open air.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you why those vent pipes can combine with wind to make the water level in your toilets move.