Good Morning New Year
There is an old folklore about predicting long term weather.
Some believe the first 12 days of January foretell the weather for each month
of the year, while others say use the 12 days of Christmas, that is December 25
through January 5. Well, both interpretations missed the spot by a mile this
past festive season. Christmas was actually a rather nice winter’s day. Cold,
but sunny. And New Year’s Day was similar. But January, which supposedly is
represented by either one of those days, depending on your interpretation of
the old saying, was and still is anything but nice winter weather. Most of
January was brutal. Especially the 5
th, 6
th and 7
th.
Thus, are we not going to have any form of summer this year?
[Uhmmm…]
It is 11:06 pm on a Monday night.
It could be any given Monday night in early January. It’s
winter. Outside a layer of ice covered by a blanket of 3 inches of snow lay
silently in the black night. The 15 mile per hour North wind has been blowing
steadily the whole day. But the snow is not your usual soft, fluffy stuff that
kids like to pick up and make snowballs from. No one is making snowballs with
this snow. The ice from below, the 15
mile wind and the teeth-shattering cold air have turned the snow into snap
crackle and pop when walked on.
Animal watching through the window. Not much else to do.
It is -4
Fahrenheit /-20 Celcius outside according to the Skyscan
weather station in my kitchen. And it can only go down from here. It tells me I
could also be seeing a quarter moon, but not tonight. A thick wall of low
clouds have waltzed in on the rhythm of the howling wind and settled over the gentle
rolling hills of the bluegrass. More snow is imminent. Now add the wind-chill
factor and suddenly it feels like -22 F / -30 C and the bone-crunching cold turns
old bones into acute arthritis pain in joints you didn’t even know you had.
Deer came looking for food
Tonight is going to be Killer. Humans with inadequate
heating, exposed animals on farms around here, sickly trees, and tender plants
not hardy enough for this “polar vortex”, the latest buzz word in meteorology,
that is flexing its muscles way out of its normal orbit. The polar Jetstream
has shifted, again, (it happens nearly every winter, in some form or fashion) and
brought the North Pole, on a nice day, down south to us.
[Thanks, but no thanks.]
I was hoping to have the porch done before the end of January, but no such luck
I wrote about it several years ago. But this year the
phenomenon is slightly different it seems. It’s pissed off! Most certainly the
worst in my 17 years here. If you just have to go from car to house or office to
car and being only briefly exposed to it is fine, however, having to go outside
and work with water and feed to ensure the chickens survive in the coop it
feels more like being on a different planet. Crunching snow under foot, icy
winds creeping through every fissure of my coat’s down material and the intense
cold and dry air on the exposed parts of my face brings tears to my eyes and
freezes ones nose hair after barely a minute or so.
[This is probably how it feels at the North Pole.]
Encapsulated
We have had it all this winter. Well, nearly all. Ice, rain,
very strong damaging windstorms, far more snow than usual, and the coldest
temperatures in more than 30 years. The
only weather phenomenon still missing is a white-out, a blizzard.
I’ll be glad to see
January’s backside. What will February bring...? It is usually our
coldest month in winter so is the worst still coming?
The pond on January 4, 2014
By January 26 is was totally frozen over and snowed in
[PS: We enjoyed glorious sunshine and a temperature into the
high 50’s on the first day of February, just like the 1st day of
January, alas, first, the rain, then the cold, again rain, which turned into ice,
and then eventually into snow, returned on the 2nd day of February.]
Make it while you have it
It is winter and I am not waiting with abated breath for
better days to come. It will come by itself. When nature is ready for spring it
will show itself. It has always done so in the past…
I suppose you could say my glass is half full.
New Year's day evening. A last look at green grass.
