Real Winter

I've been told that the Inuit have 7 words for snow. Icelanders have a word for a volcano that erupts beneath a glacier and causes a flood once the glacier wall gives way (hlaup). I wonder if those cultures have a word for real winter. This winter is the real deal. Granted, we've had many bluebird, days, but we have had lots of snow -- the banks of snow at the end of my driveway are up to my shoulder. We've also had lots of cold: 30 F feels downright balmy.

I'm not complaining. I actually like the extreme weather (not like tornadoes or Cat 5 hurricanes) but cold and snow in the winter, and heat in the summer fascinate me. They change how we interact with our world, how we function and take us out of life's everyday sameness. If you think about it, life between 35 F and 80 F is very pleasant, very easy to deal with. When you start to creep up on the high end or dip below the low end, things start to get tougher, more interesting, a bit less comfortable. Couple temps beyond this range with precipitation, humidity (or lack thereof in winter) and we are forced to adjust, and compensate even more.

Unsettled, harsher weather reminds us that we dwell in a sometimes tough place, and that despite heating and air conditioning we are still subject to nature's vagaries when we leave our cocoons. I'm looking forward to spring (who doesn't?) but I enjoy what is happening now, and permit real winter to remind me where I am, and what I am.

Frosty Morning

Fall Sky

Micro-climate

Late yesterday afternoon a cold front passed through the area and brought some rain with it along with some nice cool air. As I walked across the wet parking lot to my car after getting off the train I noticed that my car windows were covered in condensation. After I hopped into the vehicle and started the engine I turned on the wipers to clear away the moisture from the windows. The condensation however was inside the car. The warm humid air that was trapped in the car condensed on the windows as the temperature dropped during the afternoon. This is not a major event nor an earth shattering insight, but rather an interesting little science moment, and another indication that fall is well underway -- as if the beautiful foliage and the fact that inside the house is chillier than outside (another micro-climate) were not enough.

December-180

This December has been the absolute opposite of last December. Last year the temperature through December was in the 50s with some days in the 60s. I actually mowed my lawn in mid-December because it needed it and had continued to grow.

This year I mowed the lawn in early December just because I got a bit psychotic about the leaves that were blowing onto it from the hill at the back of the Quarter Acre. An injured ankle kept me off the hill and prevented raking which lead to blowing leaves and the aforementioned psychosis. The temp that day was about 30 F and it started to snow as I put the mower in its shed.

It only snowed a dusting that day but last week we got two heavy winter blasts. The first came on 13 December -- a ten inch deposit of snow that absolutely crippled the region and left me in my car, stuck on 128/I-95 for seven hours. I never made it home, opting, instead, to stay at my parents' house rather than extend my 53 mile commute into an 11 hour ordeal. I'd never seen anything like that evening's commute and I've driven to Buffalo in less time than it took me cover those 35 miles between work and my folks' house.

Two days after that we got a funky Nor'easter that dropped a decent amount of snow before turning to rain. It made for some miserable and soaked shoveling but it's real, New England, winter weather. The front yard of the Quarter Acre now looks like a World War One trench system with the front walk shoveled out, a path around to the side door, the drive way and sidewalks cleared and a trench dug that permits the spotlight that I put on the front door each Christmas to actually light the door.

I've long been a fan of the pristine snow cover but this December has changed me. I love the paths and boot prints and the sled marks in the yard -- a real winter camp/adventure feeling is permeating the Quarter Acre. I'm not quite sure where to put any snow from any future storms, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Unless some crazy tropical air mass surges in from the south this Christmas should be a white Christmas, the first that I can remember in years.