Blizzard!

Moon Report: 3% of full. waning crescent.


Today is the anniversary of the 1978 blizzard that still holds the snow record here. It started late in the evening of Jan. 24 and continued until Jan. 29. The snow was recorded at 41". The snow itself probably wouldn't have been as ghastly (other than just clearing the roads) if all that snow hadn't come with tons of wind. Some drifts were 15 feet high!

I remember my dad dug a tunnel from our door to the neighbor's across the street so we could share supplies if anyone needed anything.
I remember my dad picked me up and swung me around and let me go sailing into soft snowdrifts.
I remember some houses had drifts up to the roof and the older kids would climb to the roofs with their plastic sheet sleds and slide down.
I remember my dad being home because he couldn't get to work for several days.
I remember a lot of wet mittens and soaked snowsuits and hot cocoa and soup.

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp

if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.

--Doug Larson

I don't chuck snowballs since I got hit and had a nasty bruise on my forehead--I was about ten. I do however love snow angels--which I still make on occasion.

Vocab lesson on "cold"

To say it is "cold" is a mistake. Cold is somewhere near 32 degrees. Ass-cold is something near 0. However, we're in the range of -18 at almost 9am. We're also under a windchill warning because those winds rushing upon us (as a light breeze) are between -40 to -45. So when I ammended the weather yesterday to say we were approaching the 9th Circle of Hell, I came close.

But, damn, the view is picture perfect! Imagine a clear morning sky with pink yellow light hitting the trees and casting blue shadows over the snow...

According to my thesaurus (Roget's International Thesaurus, 5th ed.), the listing for non-formal epithets for "cold":

cold as a welldigger's ass

cold as a witch's tit (or kiss)

cold enough to freeze the tail/balls off a brass monkey

cold as a bastard/bitch

colder than hell (or the deuce/devil)

These are common around here during the winter. I'm sure there are more colorful ones as well. However, the regular use of "cold" as an adjective produced little in the way of good description. They were usual, commonplace. I didn't like them (as I hear them daily on the news). A few: sharp, bitter, keen, frigid, icy, nasty, chilly, cutting. Sometimes I wonder if the English language is limiting or we are just too lazy to explain ourselves properly.

*****

God bless all the poor trash collectors who have to be out today as it is trash day for many in our neighborhood. All the schools in the area are closed today--buses don't run and they don't want kids outside waiting for buses or walking to school. Heck, even my dog won't go out. [I've been on the computer about an hour this morning and I haven't even seen one car drive past.]

I know the weather is terrible when I have to bundle myself up in the same manner my mother did when I was five. It almost makes me wish I had snowpants. However, I must make due with thermal leggings under my jeans and two pairs of mittens and scarves and two hoods (one a hoodie sweatshirt and one on my coat). Then the shivering commences as I step out to shovel half the driveway before I come in to have hot cocoa and warm up. But today, I say bugger the driveway. It can stay snowy and I'm going to sit inside in a blanket and be lazy.

weather again

Moon Report: 21% of full. waning crescent.

For all the fancy schmancy gadgets used by meteorology today, they still have very slim chance of predicting lake effect snow. For example, Doppler radar can tell you where precipitation is falling and where lightning is striking and the clarity can tell you where tornadoes are likely to develop. That is wonderful around here in the warmer months when we tend to have those sorts of things. But snow bands off the lake and where they will go are a creature of an entirely different stripe. Yes, we can know where they are falling currently. Fine. But when the wind shifts on the lake, that shift doesn't necessarily work into creating snow.

Ok. Maybe some people need to be worked into a frenzy about the possibility of snow. Me, I hate having my chain yanked. Why can't they just say, "Hey, wake up a little earlier than normal tomorrow before work. You might have to shovel yourself out of the driveway." The weather used to say things like a system snow was on the way or that the wind would be coming off the lake with the potential for snow. Then you knew A) to wake up and make sure to warm the car and be ready to shovel; B) to leave early for work so as to make sure you were safe and on time; and C) to dress appropriately for the cold and snow (ie. gloves/mittens, woolen hat, scarf, and big heavy coat). Now, I feel as if I get babysat through the winter and half the time they are completly wrong (not usually about temperature, just snowfall).

If Doppler can pinpoint to the neighborhood where storms are rolling through, why can't the TV stations just localize weather coverage? For example, if a blizzard is pounding through Cass County in Michigan (just 7 miles from me) but doesn't cross the state line, why can't the cable companies direct line the news coverage directly to those affected? All local advertising done through the cable companies can pinpoint the ads by zipcode--so why not weather? When localized things occur, obviously it is fine to give general warning to the whole area in case someone is travelling through. But why freak out 6 counties when only one is getting pounded by the weather?

The only time I want minute by minute coverage of weather is when we've got the big storms moving through. Not snow storms--spring, summer, fall storms. The kind with thunder so big your house rattles with every peal. The kind where when lightning strikes an electric transformer in the neighborhood it sounds like a cannon and makes you deaf for a few seconds. And those are really good at bringing tornadoes. But there are other tornadoes that just happen--the sky gets a sick green. My mom, who lived through the Palm Sunday outbreak, said if the weather is oppressive and the sky is green, go to the basement.





Although this happened several years before I was born, I am sure this is a picture taken down US 33 just outside of Dunlap not a quarter mile from where I grew up. This picture is from the files of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The story can be found here.

These are the kinds of things that make me scared enough to want minute by minute coverage. Not snow. Snow is cold. It shows up and we should slow down and have enough safety provisions in the car to keep warm/hydrated until someone finds us. The ass-jacks who think that black ice is a myth or that roads are safe to drive "normally" when the plow has gone through--natural selection. And you know what, 90% of the time it is safer to drive on the back county roads away from traffic because you can drive down the center of the road at your own pace. The other 10% of the time it sucks because you get stuck in the unplowed road. So bring a shovel and cat litter and ice melt.

wrap ups and possibilities

Moon: new moon. 0% full. Every end is a beginning.
Solar Eclipse: not seen here. See articles: TimesOnline, The Age, ABC News Australia.

Also, the odd weather continues. Tornadoes in Tennesee, Arkansas, Alabama and Kentucky yesterday did huge damage--killed some fifty (maybe more?) people. In FEBRUARY. Now, after the almost fifty degree weather for the last two days we are being slapped with a nasty snow storm. However, I think Wisconsin and Chicago will get hit much harder. We expect only two to four inches...I heard Milwaukee was expecting something like fifteen.

I've been doing geneological research lately. Most of it is on my dad's side--my aunts got us traced back on their father's side to 1792 and their mother's side to 1698. Doing my own research, I've gotten us back to 1499 in Tintern, Wales (see Wordsworth). [This could have explained my English major to my parents.] It is amazing the information on the web--especially old information--some from archives, some from others searching the same geneological lines. Now that I've got the dates, I am going to try to put together lives--especially of family members that made the journey from England, Wales, and Germany. Hmm...perhaps I have found a new obsession?

I also stumbled across a dating site for scientists or the scientifically inclined. Brainy men are sexy. I love science--I like the stories: where we come from and where we could go. So many possibilites.

thick as pea soup

Moon: waning crescent. 4% full.

You know, I have always heard (and used) the phrase "thick as pea soup". However, I should say I am completely ignorant of pea soup in general--never had the stuff. Is it chowdery and filled with thickeners like corn starch and heavy creams? Is it just overloaded with peas and possibly ham chunks? These are things about which I am unaware.

I should mention I am NOT the cook in the family. (But I do make killer oatmeal rasin cookies!)

Back to the pea soup: we are surrounded with thick fog. It is 10:30ish and about 45 degrees out--and we've got about six inches of snow on the ground. Warm air+cold ground=uber fog. I couldn't even see ten feet in front of my car on the back roads...it wasn't much better in streetlamped areas either.

I adore fog (as long as I don't have to drive in it). It curls and wheedles around objects playing peekaboo with us. It is especially lovely with the emptiness of it--the deadness of sound, the isolation, the creep factor. Who could resist?

I remember one of the first Stephen King stories I read was about fog--I don't remember much except people being stuck in a grocery store(?) and needing to get home through very scary unseen monsters. I also remember Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon--and how certain people could become lost from Glastonbury and stumble through the mists and end up in Avalon. At thirteen, those story details make their way into the psyche--and now when fog is so thick you can't see your own hand I think about ghosts and monsters and wonder how lost I could get.

So tonight is a night to be insulated with one's own thoughts, one's own ghosts. It is a good night for journaling. It is a good night for blankets and a good book. It is a good time for silence and listening to all the sounds we never pay attention to during our busy lives. Fog slows everything down--take advantage of it.

whacko weather

Ok...for the last few weeks we've been seeing some funky weather. The weather people say it is due to a "la Nina" system. Come on, folks...this is odd weather even for that.


Imagine a normal winter day, cloudy and about 25ish degrees. Not bad--easy to get through. Usually we get a few bitter patches--0 degrees with negative windchill, sometimes worse. But we are fluctuating in 7 to 10 day-long courses from bitter single digits to 50+, getting tons of lake effect snow in between. We are currently in our fourth go round.


Today is a lake effect snow day. Really the snow wouldn't be so terrible if it would quit drifting. It makes roads and sidewalks impossible to keep clear. I'm about to go shovel the sidewalk for the second time this morning before I open the store.

Moon: waning crescent.

odd patches of weather

Now, living in the shadow of the Great Lakes, I have much respect for the weather they can generate on the eastern shores as winds sweep out of Canada or the western plains. I'm in one of those lucky places that sees great amounts of lake-effect snow and such. But this season has been crazy!

We have had several late fall tornadoes--and now we can add a January tornado to the list. But this sudden temperature spike has made a mess of things. Temperatures should NOT go from single digits to almost 70 when there is two and half feet of standing snow--on top of which comes three inches of rain over two days. Frozen ground does not absorb water.

So now there is flooding everywhere. My county was under some sort of "level 2 emergency"--I've never seen this designation before (is it a new Homeland Security thing?). All I know is that the southern and western portions of my county were swamped (literally) and people were urged to not drive. Pictures from the area have been all over the Weather Channel.

______________


I don't know much about global warming. However, I am very certain that seasons now are NOT the same as when I was growing up. We always had snow for Christmas when I was young--the first Christmas without snow I remember was when I was about 16. And since then, snow for Christmas has been spotty. Now I feel like seasons are shifting and leaving winter barely January and February to freeze the bad bugs down to managable levels.

Now, if we have a February tornado, I'm gonna be irked that we've come to the point where Tornado Season lasts year round.

However, what I'd like to see happen in my state: windpower. Enough wind comes off the Great Lakes to power quite a few homes year round. And maybe there would be enough wind power to get us all off of the uber-expensive natural gas heat.