Once again, the Polar Vortex has returned. I am writing this the day before it arrives and brings wind-chill temperatures into the negative fifties to my area, thinking about how long it will be before we get another day where the high temperature is in the upper teens like it is today. It’s not a big deal for most. We’re used to it at this point. I even had some people make wisecracks about my shorts and how I’ll need to find some pants or whatever (I won’t be outside in the wind long enough for it to matter tomorrow). Just another normal week of incredibly low temperatures made worse by heavy wind out of the north to make the further collapse of the jet stream that once kept these polar winds north of the Canadian border ninety-nine times out of one hundred. The rest of the country, from Texas to the distant northeast, is preparing to mountains of snow. They might be relative mountains–a couple inches in texas and multiple feet, potentially, in the plains and new england–but they all promise far more snow than the area is used to. Which I’m kind of jealous of, if I’m being honest. Where I live, all we get is temperatures far too cold for it to snow or precipitate at all and occasional snowfalls. I mean, we’ve had maybe a foot of snow fall this year so far, which is up from previous years, but most of it melted after the first round and the subsequent rounds have all been relatively light. This is not an opinion I voice anywhere that people are expecting to get slammed by snow because most of those places don’t have the infrastructure required to handle it (though, to be fair, judging by how miserably any of this year’s snow has been handled, I’m not sure my home has the infrastructure to handle it anymore either) and I don’t want to come off as insensitive, but I really do miss the days of heavy snowstorms and large amounts of snow accumulation.
Continue readingSnow
A Poor Excuse For A Wisconsin Winter
Today, while I was stuck inside working and writing blog posts during all of my breaks, the snow melted. It hit the mid-50s and would have been an excellent day for a walk if a few inches of snow hadn’t melted and turned the entire world into a swampy morass of goop, mud, and salty grit. You see, until just a couple weeks ago (two, as of this being posted), we hadn’t gotten much snow. There’d been several incredibly light dustings and maybe an inch or two total of accumulation over a couple snow events, but none of it stuck around long and it was never enough to really blanket the environment. Two weeks ago, we had a couple snowstorm events over a few days and accumulated a proper amount of snow, enough for it to ACTUALLY feel like a proper Wisconsin Winter. Now, today, it’s all melting and will likely completely vanish over the next few days as the temperatures rise above freezing and stay there. Sure, it’ll drop down eventually and we’ll get that Wisconsin Classic, the good old Wintery Mix of snow, rain, and sleet that turns the world to slush, but this is probably going to be it for actual snow accumulation barring some strange late-March temperature drops. A week and a half of snow. Maybe three or four weeks of decently cold temperatures, most of it without much snow. And then a bunch of days in the fifties, tons in the fourties, and who know how many High Temperature Records. What a terrible excuse for a winter.
Continue readingSpring Weather In Winter And Winter Weather In Spring
I spent my most recent Friday (two Fridays ago from when this gets posted) spring-cleaning my apartment. Which feels a little funny to write today, given the blizzard conditions I drove in last night and the multiple inches of slowly-melting slush that still coat the ground today. A lot of which is only just thawing out from last night’s freeze. We’re solidly in April now and still getting wintery weather, despite much of our actual winter being much closer to what I’d expect of spring around this point in the year. It’s not unheard of for us to get a few late snows (as late as May, sometimes) as spring temperatures fluctuate, but we rarely get snow after we’ve had a day that has broke past seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Yesterday, two days of rain turned into about thirty-six hours of snow and while it only just barely froze while it was falling yesterday, that little bit of ice and tons of slush turned my evening commute from its comfortable fifteen minutes into an hour-long affair. It was horrendous and coming home to a still-clean apartment was only mildly comforting. After all, I had to turn my heat up again and figure out what I was going to do the next day if the roads proved too treacherous to risk (as it turns out, the roads were fine, but getting to them was nearly impossible because my landlord never plowed my parking lot and being in an underground parking garage means contending with a slippery, uphill drive that proved impossible on mornings like today’s). Which wasn’t a huge issue, but it’s still incredibly off-putting to have spent a solid ten hours with my windows open as I cleaned my apartment more thoroughly than I have since before I moved into it and then, just over three days later, see snow blowing in my still-open bedroom window.
Continue readingSo Much For A Proper Wisconsin Winter
A doom of ice descends upon us all. Probably, anyway. Once it rains next week and melts all of this almost two feet of snow, it will eventually get cold and freeze all of that slush and water. Normally, I’d say something about being terrified of road conditions in weather lik that, but we’ve already got roads of solid ice thanks to the city doing such a shit job at plowing everything but the arterial roadways and the fact that they’re cutting back on salt a huge amount this year. I didn’t expect them to cut back on sanding or gritting the roads as well, too, but here I am slipping and sliding around everywhere because all the salted places didn’t get salted enough to deal with the ice before the sun sets and it all refreezes, so there’s at least a little bit too much ice everywhere and an unsafe amount of it everywhere I drive on a daily basis except the highway. I honestly don’t know what the hell anyone is thinking because this seems incredibly dangerous. I mean, I’m used to seeing cars in ditches during and for a couple days after snow storms. What I don’t expect is to see new cars in ditches every single day for (as of writing this) seven days after the blizzard.
Continue readingThe First Heavy Snowfall Of This Wisconsin Winter
We finally got our first blizzard. It isn’t the first snow that will probably stick around for a month or more (that fell a few days prior) [and all of this turned out to be speaking way too soon since we have rain and temperatures in the high 30s and 40s forecast for a week from now so it probably won’t actually last a month], but we got a decent amount of snow dumped on us and even more whipped around. The winds were so strong that they were picking snow up off the ground to add to the stuff already in the air because it hadn’t hit the ground yet. It was quite a day and I spent it working from home since it started in the early hours of the morning and carried on until an hour or two before midnight. It was quite a pleasant bit of weather to enjoy from the cozy confines of my apartment. I’m luckly enough, at present, to avoid most of the unpleasant bits of winter weather since I don’t have to shovel any sidewalks or driveways, I didn’t have to drive anywhere, and all that took me outside was my own desire to go out in the snow as it fell. A desire I sated mostly by opening my door to my balcony rather than by going downstairs since my landlord has done a pretty poor job of maintaining the sidewalks between the apartment buildings and I didn’t want to mess with slush and ice on top of all that wind. I even discovered the the tree right outside my balcony is the perfect kind of pine tree to hold snow on its branches and gets transformed into a beautiful white statue. As far as wintery days go, this one was aesthetically pleasing to me and went a long way towards redeeming my experience with winter over the last few years.
Continue readingThe Weather Patterns Have A Bit Too Much “Pattern” To Them, Lately
In the past two weeks, we’ve had pretty much the same pattern of weather. Early in the week, temperatures rise and we get some rain. The rain and warmer temperatures melt all but the most packed-down, stubborn traces of all the snow that came before it. Then, before the ground has time to dry out, the temperatures drop, everything freezes, and we get a heavy snow. Two weeks ago, it was a wet, heavy snow that made travel miserable and that threatened to break the back of anyone forced to shovel it by hand. It was a damp, clinging thing that forced me to cut my daily walk short as it soaked through my clothing and left me exposed to the bitter bite of the heavy winds. Last week’s snow was light, letting itself get cast about by the raging winds so much that it was almost impossible to tell how much snow had fallen. Sections of my walk were free of snow while others where treacherous as the ice that formed from the puddles that remained the night before hid beneath blankets of snow. After each snow, there was a day of cold as it all settled in and froze before warmer temperatures returned, melted the snow, and rain finished off what remained.
Continue readingMeditative Silence On A Snowy Morning
Today, in search of inner peace, I venture out of my cozy apartment, choosing to risk my well-being against the slippery, uncleared sidewalks of my area in order to enjoy a bit of untouched winter wonderland walking. After all, the people who clear the snow around my apartment do so in a swift, brutal, and utilitarian manner, churning up not just snow and ice but grass and dirt as well. Trading visual appeal, the health of the plant life on the property, and the occasional bit of property damage for speed, they will clear the sidewalks and then scatter mounds of salt until not just the sidewalks but the insides of our apartments are stained white with the remnants of the crystalline anti-ice measure. It will be safe to walk, then, but bereft of the appealing blankness and weight of a fresh, heavy snow. Whatever joy I might have gained will be gone, replaced by sad reflection on humanity’s drive to conquer and removed nature rather than cohabitate with it.
Continue readingA Peaceful Walk In Heavy Snow
I went for a walk today, the same as almost every day. This time, though, as I grabbed my sweatshirt, put on my shoes, and slipped my coat on overtop, I didn’t pause to check the weather. I needed air. I needed to breath. I needed some space after being cooped up in my apartment for the fourth day in a row. I’ve been sick lately, working from home so I don’t spread this respiratory thing around the office. My head is clear, but my chest aches from the gentle rumble of coughing, muted by cold medicine and cough drops, that never seems to stop so much as briefly pause. I need fresh air now that my stifling apartment is blocked up with plastic so thoroughly that not even a faint puff of air can sneak in to steal away the heat I’ve been so carefully managing to maintain my comfort while sick. So I did not pause to check the forecast or look outside as I ran away from the close confines of my cozy, dim home.
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 readingWrapped In A Warm Blanket
Today was one of my favorite kind of days.
Snow is falling, gently drifting to the ground like a curtain of white flakes. There is a light breeze, not quite constant but steady enough that the snow seems to drift in only one direction. It is cold, but the thermometer proclaims it is just above freezing in the same breath that the wind declares it is just below it. There is no sun, but it is still bright out despite the thick haze of falling snowflakes as every bit of light is reflected by every surface. This is a wet snow, after all, hanging at the precipice of melting while the sun is hidden behind the clouds, so it blankets everything.
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