Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
“For the first time I can remember…”
But it’s not the first time I can remember because it’s a benefit of Stars Hollow that I could grow up as a kid with snow banks high enough to construct a proper waist high fort with plenty of reserve ammunition, a life size snow person (I dunno, isn’t three balls how we all look?), and a highly dangerous block long sled run through multiple yards and hedges.
Keep your arms inside the car and stop or bail out before you hit one. Not that there’s much traffic, but you could have an evil look out.
When I was in upstate New York it snowed all the time and I plowed home with positrac more than once which was quite a contrast from the tropical confines of the heated pools where I worked. One day I walked over 2 miles in sub zero temperatures because the Blue Shark (my car at the time) wouldn’t start.
My friends would cross country ski through the park across the street which I tried a couple of times but found the uphill parts fatiguing and the downhill parts terrifying so I soon gave that up (they were good losers at Flash Bowling though).
Other amusements were Pitch (also called Set Back) which we played at work whenever we had a break, and Wednesday night Season Pass to the local mountain to shiver on a lift and not sweat your way up a slope. Quite the sight to see all those skis rusting at the side of the pool.
Then there was the year I snooted the last six pack of Knickerbocker (that vile) at the Universal Market which happened to be right next to my dorm.
The point is that while I can remember what I consider “normal” snow I haven’t seen it much recently. It’s reminded me of the early springs when I used to crunch through patches of dirt frost on my way to the library and imagined I was on a terraformed Mars. This is the warmest year ever.
The world our children will inherit will be deeper, steeper, warmer, and wetter (not in a good way) than ours.
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… I bookmarked a webcam of the New Jersey shore that looks like the Arctic right now.
Haven’t seen that in a while. Decades. The camera is down today (!!!) but you can see the previous shots from this month at the bottom
http://www.wunderground.com/we…
We learned our winter sports on natural snow and ice, and I remember walking on a frozen tidal bay, (with my parents, and not too far from shore) which is pretty unusual at that latitude.
Now I’ve gone skiing up in the Sierra (good year for snow) and it’s so warm that the air temps hit the 50’s in January.
And when that surface freezes after melting, you go flying off the lifts like it’s rocket propulsion if you have fresh wax, and nearly hit the safety netting.
But midwestern frozen sleet storms that bring down powerlines and coat everything in inches of ice, so you have to melt things with a propane torch to get them open, like gate latches, are still the worse. That **** kills unsheltered animals and humans. And there are lots more of them, too. And tornadoes in January. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…
Or just on New Year’s Eve http://www.spokesman.com/stori…