Winter seems to have passed. The snow will stick around for a while since it is close enough to freezing that the almost two feet of snow will take some time to melt (though most of it might be gone by the time you’re reading this since, at the time I’m writing this, there’s going to be rain between those two moments). The icy roads have turned to slush, the constant chill has been replaced by a heavy blanket of damp, and there’s fog almost every single morning and night (and even during the days sometimes, too, thanks to the heavy cloud cover). It’s officially spring weather and it’s still January. The long range forecast says that we might have a few more days that peak below freezing, but we’ll have even more days in the forties over the same span of time. It was pretty intense, getting all of winter crammed into a two and a half week period of time, but we sure got it all. Icy roads that the city doesn’t clear enough for anything but slow, cautious driving, multiple blizzards, multiple snowstorms that snow just enough to make driving difficult but not enough that the plows come out to clear it up, a plunge into the negatives where it is actually dangerous to be outside for more than a few minutes, and a whole heap of grey, cloudy days that don’t let one iota of sunlight through. All in a two-week period. What a winter this has been, even when it’s barely a month old.
Continue readingWeather
So 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 readingA 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 readingFinding Comfort In The Cool Fall Weather
So far, the cooler seasons are off to a great start for me, personally. I’ve not only learned that my apartment can get a decent enough cross-breeze if the wind is coming from the right direction, but that just closing the windows is enough for the temperature to start rising inside it, even after the sun has shifted from shining through the windows to just reflecting off the roof. Any day where I’ve felt like my apartment got too cold overnight (the lowest I’ve seen it so far was just under sixty degrees and that was a night it was almost freezing outside), all I have to do is close the windows and it will warm right back up again. My old apartment could not be counted on to ever warm back up and then stay warm throughout the day unless I had the heat running. As a result of all that, I actually had my windows open for over two weeks in a row, adjusting how open they were to control the temperature and enjoying every minute of fresh air I was getting. In fact, the only reason they weren’t open longer is because I left for the weekend to visit a friend and wanted to see what would happen during a relatively chilly weekend if I left all the windows shut and the air off. It worked out pretty well, though it never got quite as warm as I’d hoped it would, so I’ll probably need to run a few more tests to dial in my expectations.
Continue readingFall Has Finally Fallen Over Wisconsin
After what felt like a never-ending summer (I’ve been wearing shorts and flipflops non-stop since I-don’t-even-know-when last spring, but it was easily five months ago since I made the change before my friends’ wedding), fall has finally arrived. It feels odd to see the leaves already making substantial progress give most nights haven’t dropped below the mid-sixties until very recently, but there have been enough cooler days that they maybe got the program. Or maybe they’re trying to provide an example since it feels like the temperature is following the leaves rather than the other way around. I mean, it is actually fall now, on the calendar, so it’s been weird seeing summer stick around as long as it has (with a significant resurgence in the last days of September and first days of October). Normally we’d have had a week or two of cooler days and many cooler nights by this point, but the day I’m writing this is the first time I’ve thought about leaving my windows open all day since it won’t get warm enough to wish I’d turned the AC on at any point in the next few days. Sure, it might wind up warmer inside than I keep the AC at, but I only keep it there so my home is cool at night and so my bedroom is cool enough for me to sleep easily when I go to bed rather than knowing I’ll have to resign myself to a sweaty hour or two before it finishes cooling down since I turned the air on after I got home from work.
Continue readingGoing On Vacation
Today’s post is the last one you’ll see from me until April 5th at the earliest. As this goes up, I’m currently on the road to New Jersey (and here is my routine reminder that I write and schedule these a week ahead of time), so I won’t be taking the time to write a post today. After today, I’ll either be flying to, in, or flying back from Spain. Then, on the 3rd, I’ll be driving back to good old Wisconsin from New Jersey (and attempting to do it all in one day, unlike the drive down that will be split into two days). I will probably wind up splitting that into two days of driving as well since I am enthusiastic and willing to push myself but not suicidal or foolhardy (well, I supposed that depends on which of my friends you ask, though). I’m not going to risk myself. I imagine that I’ll probably be tired and maybe still a bit jetlagged at that point, since I’m getting back to New Jersey late Sunday night and plan to leave fairly early Monday morning.
Time will tell, though, since I have the ability to take more time off if I need it and I won’t know how I’m feeling until I get there. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually feel super rested and ready for a long haul. I doubt I’ll feel anything but tired at that point, but I’m open to other possibilities. I wouldn’t mind being pleasantly surprised. I actually enjoy driving, after all, and the only reason I’d need to spread the drive out over multiple days (beyond my own potential exhaustion, of course) is if the weather turns bad. I’d done enough driving in awful weather to know that I’d be better off waiting it out than trying to drive through most of it, and late March/early April is prime “late snowstorm” weather. There’s always the chance of thunderstorms, too, so all I can do at this point is speculate.
When I’m back, I’m sure I’ll have plenty to write about and maybe even some pictures to share. Though I’ll likely only share pictures that I’d use to replace the header image on my blog. I don’t really do much with pictures here, even if I have a bunch that I’ve taken and still like years later. I just don’t really want to get into all the formatting and stuff, you know? Plus, I’m really bad about just leaving stuff on my phone for years, eventually dumping it into folders on my PC, and then ultimately forgetting it’s there until I stumble on the folder again while looking for something else (which I then immeditealy forget about as I embark on a long trip down memory lane). Many of my friends have stopped asking me to take photos of them as a result. I always offer to send them the photos they want but they decline, usually thinking they’ll pull them off Facebook eventually, but I don’t put shit on Facebook and haven’t for several years at this point.
Anyway, I don’t really have much more to say other than you will get your next post on April 5th and I’ll have plenty of stories about traveling abroad when I come back (which will only show up after a week’s delay, of course). We’ve got some cool stuff planned (not to mention I get to see a friend in person that I haven’t seen since May of 2013), so I’m hoping to have a great time and to wind up with plenty I’d like to talk about. Have a good week and a half, everyone.
The 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 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 readingA Rainy Grey Day in January
It rained today. It is the middle of January and, instead of the freezing cold, snow, sleet, and “wintery mix” I’ve grown accustomed to in the Midwest, it merely rained. It was a cold rain, to be sure, as the temperature is hovering right above freezing and driven below it by every gust of wind, but it was not a freezing rain. It plinked off my umbrella with a liquidity I don’t typically expect a month into winter. Usually it bounces off my umbrella with a plonk and snap, as the fabric repels the solid crystals or sludgy drops, but today it plinked and then slowly rolled away. I know the cold and bitter winter I expect is still hovering on the horizon, waiting for its chance to invade once these warm southern winds finally leave it be, but it feels like it lost any real chance it had to take hold this year, despite the havoc it wreaked around the holidays.
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