After months and months of summer, fall arrived in a single week. I had my AC on not that long ago and now I have to close my windows because it’s getting too cold in my apartment. And yet we’ve got temperatures in the seventies coming up next week [or in a day or two, as this post goes up]. It has been an absolutely wild Fall, so far, and I’m reminded of that Spring from a few years ago where we went from cold, wet, and snowy to hot and humid in a week and a half in May. We had exactly one week of Spring after a very long Winter and then went straight to Summer. Sure, we’ve had more Fall than that already, and it looks like we’re going to have plenty more as the temperatures change up and down (which is usually a sign that most of the heat it coming from the sun rather than from the weather and prevailing winds), but it was a rather drastic shift to go from weather routinely in the high seventies and eighties that rarely dropped into the fifties to weather dropping below freezing and barely breaking out of the fifties for a few days at a time. It looks like, finally, a couple weeks into October, Fall is here to stay.
Continue readingCold
A Warm Start To Winter
Aside from a two-day period of low temperatures, high winds, and biting cold (it was so windy on one of those days that I was almost knocked over by a particularly vicious gust and I’m difficult to even stagger, let alone topple), it has been a fairly mild December so far. Most days, the temperature spends a decent chunk of the day above freezing, there’s some sunlight, and my wall AC/Heater unit is enough to keep my apartment comfortable against the chill. Sure, we’ve had an oddly rainy and grey parcel of days lately, with occasional periods of snow sprinkled in for flavor, but it’s been kind of nice, especially compared to last year. Last year, it was so windy and cold that it permanently damaged the aircraft transportation network in the US (and almost made me miss my trip to Spain due to the cascading ripples of the week that so many flights were cancelled rather than rescheduled). This chilly, wet, and sunless weather might not be welcome, but it sure beats the pants off how awful last it was this time last year. I actually had to buy firewood and go through my plans for what to do if I lost power because I’m pretty sure my apartment would have frozen if I’d lost my ability to heat it against that drafty cold. So I can put up with this, even if I’d probably be better insulated against the cold and wind in my current apartment than I ever could have been in my previous one.
Continue readingDangerously Beautiful Winter Weather
Every day this week has been sunny. From weeks of clouds and mild weather, we’ve emerged into sunlight so bright it’s blinding as cold winds keep the area so cold it is dangerous to go on walks despite it. With wind chills frequently bringing the temperature below the negative ten degrees fahrenheit temperature that marks the point where exposed skin might get frostbite over the length of a normal walk, I’ve had to take special precautions in order to continue my daily stroll. They’re relatively minor, thankfully, since I’ve lived in the Midwest all my life and have access to the kinds of winter gear required to prevent any damage to my person. The only problem I wasn’t really ready to handle was just how blinding it has been outside, every single day, thanks to the heavy snow we got last weekend and the brilliant, cloudless days we’ve had since.
Continue readingHunkering Down For A Holiday Blizzard
There’s a storm coming. It probably won’t hit with the severity they’re predicting two days ahead of it’s arrival [it didn’t], but it’s probably still going to be freezing cold and awful for the whole thing [it was] even if it never quite reaches the monstrous blizzard severity they’re saying is possible. I mean, that’s the thing about living where I do. We tend to catch the edge of every storm that swings down from Canada toward the rest of the Midwest and upper East Coast, but we rarely get hit by the worst of it. As someone who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, getting frequently struck by heavy storms and intense weather of all kinds, I kind of miss it. Sure, my perspective now would be very different, since I actually need to go places, do things, and ostensibly keep my home accessible to the world, but I wouldn’t mind a day or two of being snowed in just to enjoy the cozy feeling of not needing to be anywhere while the snow falls.
Continue readingCoping Mechanisms In My Daily Life
As I move around my apartment, scrubbing the walls around my windows in preparation for my yearly tradition of covering them in a layer of insulating and draft-blocking plastic, I am struck by how much of my life is taken over by what are essentially coping mechanisms for things beyond my control. I’m also struck by how many bugs have died in the three weeks since I last pulled my carpet back to sweep the half-inch of space between said carpets and my patio door, but that doesn’t really make for an interesting blog post topic. The entire process I’m going through is one meant to mitigate the fact that my apartment complex has absolutely terrible windows that not only leak cold through them like a sieve (thanks largely to their terrible metal frames) but that are so poorly installed or maintained that they don’t even block the wind. It’s much more difficult to detect when the entire frame is uncovered, but putting the plastic over them makes it clear that there’s wind blowing through them almost constantly.
Continue readingThe First Taste of Wisconsin Winter
[Another casual reminder that I write these a week before they go up, since it’s currently summer in Wisconsin again]
It is snowing again today. Over night, the temperatures bottomed out in the high twenties and even hours after dawn, with temerpatures flirting with freezing for hours already, there was still the pale remnants of the morning’s frost on the deep green grass outside my apartment. Flurries of small, damp snowflakes fill the air like mist and dampen the world as the trees drip what remains of the snow that landed on them from their brightly colored leaves. I am bundled up against the wind and chill, my layers quickly dug out of the closet when it became clear that my usual fall garb would be insufficient for the day, and still I briefly consider turning around for a heavier coat. I walk along the sidewalk, tracing the same old path from my front door to my car, but far more attentively than in past months for fear of slipping on the ice that stretches across the sidewalk. Today, I miss the comfort of holding a warm mug in my hand as my new coffee cup prevents any heat from escaping it but I am grateful that my coffee will still be warm throughout my entire drive to work on this blustery, snowy morning.
Continue readingWinter Is Coming, Weather I Like It Or Not
It snowed yesterday (here’s my usual reminder that I write these a week ahead of time, so really it was eight days before this posted). It was fairly brief and I only got a bare glimpse of it because I was busy at work. I couldn’t stop to go watch the mixed snow and sleet come down, which was unfortunate, but I did get to see a bunch of people walk down a hallway I can see from my desk and a lot of them were dusted with the stuff. It’s not really the same thing at all, but it was enough for me to know it was snowing and when it eventually stopped. It was a weird occurrence, given that there hadn’t even been rain on the forecast when I went in to work that morning, and weirder still when you consider that we had a 24-hour period that hit the mid-sixties at the lowest just two days prior. Sure, it was above freezing so the snow didn’t stick around upon landing on the ground, but it was still weird to get our first snow in mid October. I mean, just recently I was thinking about how weird it’d be if we got our first snow before Halloween again and here we are, more than half a month beforehand. Now we’ve got a span of days sitting around freezing before we pop back into the sixties and maybe even seventies in about a week. Absolutely normal weather, for sure.
Continue readingThe Changing Season Through My Window
After what felt like a lifetime, summer has ended. Fall is here in all its bright, colorful glory. The trees have begun to change from the pale, warm, or emerald greens of summer to the various browns, scarlet reds, muted yellows, and eye-catching oranges of Fall. It is a slow process, where I live, striking seemingly at random rather than in the calm orderly manner the trees displayed when coming to life in the spring. Different trees of the same type begin to change in their own time, content to merely overlap instead of coordinate. Spots of red appear at random and the giant green tree outside my window has four parallel streaks of orange in it, like Fall somehow passed by and rent the summer from its boughs with massive claws. Already the parking lot fills with fallen leaves and the summer heat fades into the haphazard warmth and chill of the changing season. It has been barely four months since the trees finally tore free from winter’s grasp and I find myself wondering if that is part of the reason so many branches stayed bare this year.
Continue readingI Wear Shorts To Spite The Weather
I used to be one of the people who wore shorts even during the depths of winter. I’m not sure how it is in other parts of the world, but in the Midwest of the US, it is fairly common to see such folk, frequently masculine in appearance (but not limited to that by any means) trudging through blizzards and all but the worst wind chills. It always made sense to me, given that I spent most of the winter indoors, in buildings with their heat set for people who needed a higher external temperature to be comfortable. I didn’t want to attempt to change the ambient temperature for my comfort alone, so I started wearing shorts and upperbody layers that were easy to remove (zippered hoodies, mostly) so that I could be comfortable. It wasn’t that I was immune to the cold outside, just that I was willing to endure a few minutes of being uncomfortable in order to spend two hours in class or at work without needing to fight off sweat or the sleepies.
Continue readingLingering Chill
There is a certain pleasure in hunkering down for the winter months in the cold, enduring Midwestern north. As the temperatures drop, the rain turns to sleet that turns normal stairs and sloping lawns into treacherous slides for those without adequate caution. Empty, grey days turn into cozy retreats as people turn from excusing their flight from the worsening weather to embracing it. Life goes on, as always, but the quiet moments that once demanded to be filled are now left empty save for rest and warmth, attention turned inward instead of outward. Homes become bastions of warmth and life, drifting and disconnected from the world around them save for the moments that they open up to share their light with those daring enough to still travel between them.
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