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Category: weather

Tale of Two Railings

Tale of Two Railings

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Yesterday’s snow meant business. Right from the start, the flakes flying only briefly before they touched and stuck. And unlike recent, more iffy snows, this one light, dry, easier to shovel and scrape.

It piled up slowly but inexorably, and by late afternoon, snow on the deck railing looked about three to four inches. After several more hours of steady precipitation (minus a little from the blowing), this morning’s total looks closer to six. And if today’s temperature is any indication (3 degrees F), it will be with us for a few days.

Gee, I guess it’s winter or something. It hasn’t been for a years, so we’re out of practice.

Company Town: Closed

Company Town: Closed

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Living in a company town produces some funny situations. Like today. The federal government is closed and so is my university. No complaints there, although deadlines being deadlines, I’ll be working anyway.

The funny thing is the unanimity of opinion. And the reliance on experts, in this case meteorologists. There’s not a flake of snow flying but we’re all hunkered down. The reason, of course, is traffic. In the last few years late-breaking snow storms have produced jams of biblical proportions, people arriving home seven, eight hours after they left for what they thought would be an hour-long commute.

So we’re taking no chances. We’re playing it safe. We’re grinding the wheels of government and commerce to a halt. We’re calling it a snow day.

Now all we need is the snow!

Single Digits

Single Digits

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Yesterday I awoke to a temperature of 1 degree F. This morning we are basking in a relatively balmy 5 degree F. Which has me thinking about digits, single in specific but also digits in general.

When I studied “new math” in the old days we called them “tens and ones.”  Maybe I’ve just forgotten, but I don’t think we used the term “place value.” Then again, the “new math” I studied in grammar school was discontinued by the time I reached junior high.

The word digit, though — it’s been around a while. And I thought of it yesterday not only because the temperature was in the single digits but also because the temperature most affected my digits. My fingers and toes were aching with the cold after my single-digit walk (nine minutes, tops) from Metro to the office.

So this post is a paean to digits, to the fingers and toes, the most exposed; to the basic unit of measure, the original abacus; to the root of digital and all the good things (!) that derive from it.

We start with the body and move ever outward. Just think how far we’ve come.

Polar Vortex

Polar Vortex

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Snowmaggedon. Snowquester. And now … the Polar Vortex.

Used to be, only hurricanes had names. Now rain, snow — even cold snaps — do.

There’s something homey about naming a weather system, something that binds us to it. True, there is a cheekiness about it, a bit like the arm-clasping, shoulder-hugging person who calls you by a nickname you’ve never liked or used. But it makes it easy to refer to it later; it’s a handle, a quick reference.

But listening to the wind roar in yesterday, hearing its powerful rush, seeing this morning’s thermometer reading (1!), I have this feeling that the weather would rather remain anonymous, mysterious, even magisterial. That which should not be spoken aloud, only witnessed.

Reducing it to a nickname may make it easier to take, but it doesn’t diminish its power.

Wind and Snow

Wind and Snow

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The wind woke me. It roared in from the west, carrying single-digit temperatures and an arctic bite.

This is cold that takes your breath away, that is no longer bracing but something to brace yourself for.

The bamboo hangs its head, weighted with the white stuff. Maybe the winds will blow it clean.

Deep Currents

Deep Currents

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Temperature extremes of the last week have us reeling. I walk in shorts and t-shirt one day, in sweat shirt and jacket the next.

A few days ago, in a t-shirt, I walked through air as changeable as water, as strange to the touch as those warm and cool spots you swim through in a spring-fed lake.

It occurred to me then that not only was the air like the water, but the weather was, too. Alternating puddles of days, as mysterious in their origins as those deep currents.

White World Shining

White World Shining

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–>

Yesterday’s walk took me past evergreens with fondant-icing snow caps and bent
trees aching with ice but still lovely in their brokenness. In the sky was a
wan half moon with V’s of blackbirds flying.
Nature consoles even as it wounds. The forest so deep and
white, the trees glimmering in the sun that appeared late enough in the day that I had already resigned myself to snow, fog and cloud cover.
But shine it did, and I had no choice but to pause in my shoveling and writing and editing and  telephoning  — pause to see the white world shining.
Snow on Ice

Snow on Ice

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Yesterday morning we woke to a frozen world, each bough and twig coated and gleaming. By 1 p.m. it was 33 degrees, and I could slide to the corner, where the pavement was wet but not icy. I could run the main road, could see how many trees were damaged during the storm.

Ice is beautiful but dangerous. How much would we pay for such beauty? Not another red oak, that’s for sure — but some bent bamboo stalks, I would gladly trade those to walk through such a strange, glittering, dripping world.

A new day now and fresh snow is falling. We have several inches on the ground and, more to the point, a heavy layer on every branch, bough and twig. It’s no longer a hard, bright, frozen world,  it’s a soft, white, feathery one.

But I know the ice that lurks beneath.

Morning Fog

Morning Fog

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After several days that started as cold and hard as a stone, brittle light at morning, we begin today with soft fog and crow-call.

It reminds me of a Thomas Hardy poem:

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;

Although reading the poem more closely, I realize that today’s weather is what Hardy doesn’t like, as  he says in his second stanza:

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;

I’ve not been out in this weather yet, but for for atmospheric backdrop while sitting inside with a cup of tea, it can’t be beat.

The Other Side of the Moon

The Other Side of the Moon

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The first cold of the season blew in yesterday. I’m not talking about frost on the pumpkin or a nip in the air. This cold meant business. Low 20s with the meteorologists already mentioning wind chill. There was even snow in the forecast for Tuesday.

I’m never ready for this, always find it an affront. What happened to balmy nights, crickets chirping, bats flitting high up, above the tree line? What happened to heat?

Truth be told, it may be with us again by next week! That’s the way our weather goes these days. But even if it warms up tomorrow, it’s too late now. The cold has happened. The gloves are on.

Cold weather is the other side of the moon. Every year a mystery; every year a drag.

(No snow yet, but it’s only a matter of time!)