That animated gif isn’t from this year. This year there’s been snow on the ground continuously since, since, well, let’s call it forever, because I can’t remember. But there’s not as much as last year. It’s too cold to snow. There’s no ground showing or anything, but the snow is glacial, not slide-y.
I have to pay close attention to the weather because it’s hard to heat the house. I don’t watch television, and wouldn’t watch a TV weather report if I did. I do look at a webpage that has high and low temps projected on a calendar. Well, I did. I got to be a fairly good hand at triangulating what the actual temperature might be by using the hinky numbers they offered. I used to use one webpage, but it went full retard, hid all the temperature numbers, and covered the entire surface of the website with video thumbnails that tout YouTube videos with titles like: You won’t believe what happened to this one couple while they were shoe shopping and eating artisanal cupcakes on their honeymoon! The entire page turned into linkbait crapola too stupid for Buzzfeed. The weather was around back, I guess, like it would be if you bought an elephant and fed it refried beans.
I turned it off and tried what my wife calls the Happy Funtime Weather! webpage. She calls it that because they always say it will be five to ten degrees warmer than it is. It cheers her up to see it. It’s like people telling you that you look mahvelous when you’re caught taking the trash out to the curb in your sweat clothes and slippers, with your hair making architectural poses and sleep seeds in your eyes. Besides, who are you going to believe, the weather channel or your lying eyes and the thermometer?
Anyway, I turned it on a few days ago, and Happy Funtime Weather! decided they’d change the site to default to Centrigade temperatures, because they’re hopeless weenies, and it said it was going to be 22 below zero that day, which looked a bit off to me. It took me a few moments to figure out what had happened.
It had been 17 below zero a week ago, but that was good old Fahrenheit numbers. On the same day I got up and saw it was 17 below zero at daybreak, the Happy Funtime Weather! channel was trumpeting a story I wasn’t interested in from a Maine newspaper. It said that some commissar had announced that ALL WAS WELL, and because it was so hot all the time, people in Maine shouldn’t worry about their heating bills, because it was so hot. Those bills were going to be so low, because it was so hot.
I’ve run out of shipping pallets to burn, so I’m slowly taking apart the barbarous shelving someone built out of rough lumber all around the basement of my house 75 years ago, and I’m burning it in the furnace. Luckily, none of that will show up on by heating bill, which will be so low, because it’s so hot.
8 Responses
Heh. I've been waiting for you to mention the biblical weather up there. Glad to hear people still ship things to Maine. Can you score any driftwood from that crick behind you, or are you all master divers now?
You should really think about moving to Arizona.
"You won't believe what happens to the desert in the winter!"
Here in New Mexico we don't have furnaces. They are not allowed to even sell them. Most of the folks down here heat their homes with rocks. The sun warms rocks during the day and right around sundown people carry the rocks into their homes and the heat given off is enough to get them through the night. Some newcomers from east of the Mississippi brought fireplaces with them when they retired to down here but there is no wood to speak of, only cactus and shrubs. Bootleggers will provide actual wood for those that need it but the cord price is beyond most people's means. Others have taken cardboard and formed it into the shape of crude logs.
I was talking with a neighbor yesterday. Wait, that's a funny one because I don't even have neighbors. Wait, it's funny too because there wasn't even a yesterday.
This is fun. Anyway, my fictitious neighbor fictitious yesterday was saying (quite fictitiously, by the way) that his dad lives where the internet weather station is, and that the weather there is always colder than it is here. T'hel I said. Is colder here continually. Fictitiously, too.
I understand they have a computer now that models the weather a hundred years into the future. Works out flow dynamics and turbulence. I wonder how many BTUs that computer puts out?
Hey Master and Commander from the Other Side of the Country:
http://blog.robballen.com/Post/25604/graaaains
I think of you warmly
I think of you; warmly
D
+1 for the Stones reference. Hopefully you won't have to resort to burning old album covers. Stay warm!
This comment has been removed by the author.
I use the National Weather Service sites because (a) I'm paying for them, so why not, (b) I'm somewhat of a weather nerd, and (c) no ads!
Here is the local forecast site (dial in your own ZIP code).
You want radar? Here is the national "loop."
The "tech" discussion is often interesting and tells more about the uncertainties, and sometimes they slip in wry, dry humor.
And for an overview here is the Storm Prediction Center.
You're welcome.