Tag: Winter

Arrest Warrant Issued for Queen Elsa

Unless you are living in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is summer, Latin America, a Caribbean Island or Hawaii, a good part of the the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing some really rough winter weather, especially the northeastern United States.

The police department of Harlan, Kentucky think they have found the culprit who is causing the cold temperatures and snow storms (It’s not Mother Nature) and issued a warrant for her arrest.

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All points bulletin!!! HPD has issued an arrest warrant for Queen Elsa of Arendelle. Suspect is a blonde female last seen wearing a long blue dress and is known to burst into song “Let it Go!” As you can see by the weather she is very dangerous. Do not attempt to apprehend her alone.

The weather is getting more extreme. An article in Scientific American discusses the link between the rapidly warming Arctic and the wavy jet stream that is causing the weird winter weather:

One thing we do know is that the polar jet stream-a fast river of wind up where jets fly that circumnavigates the northern hemisphere-has been doing some odd things in recent years.

Rather than circling in a relatively straight path, the jet stream has meandered more in north-south waves. In the west, it’s been bulging northward, arguably since December 2013-a pattern dubbed the “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” by meteorologists. In the east, we’ve seen its southern-dipping counterpart, which I call the “Terribly Tenacious Trough.”

These long-lived shifts from the polar jet stream’s typical pattern have been responsible for some wicked weather this winter, with cold Arctic winds blasting everywhere from the Windy City to the Big Apple for weeks at a time.

We know that climate change is increasing the odds of extreme weather such as heatwaves, droughts and unusually heavy precipitation events, but is it making these sticky jet-stream patterns more likely, too? Maybe.

My Little Town 20120104: Cold Weather Activities

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Since we have had a really cold snap here in the Bluegrass, I began reflecting on what it like in the winter when I was growing up in Hackett.  When I was a kid it was colder in the winter in Arkansas for the most part than it was when I was older.  A least, that is how I remember it being.  Kids tend, or at least tended at the time before video games and computers, to get outside even during cold weather, but I think that it was colder back then, and I have some memories of why I think that.

For one thing, it snowed and sleeted more then than it did later.  Now where I grew up one or two snows deep enough to build snow men is about typical, but as I recall there would be three or four snows when I was little.  They seemed to last longer, but days seem longer to a child than to and adult.

A Winter’s Tale

Tonight Eastern Standard Time will begin.  Again.  And that, around here, is the dreaded beginning of horrible Winter.  This, after all, is Upstate New York.  I’m nestled against the Massachusetts border.  And the beginning of Eastern Standard Time fills me with utter dread.

What stands between me and actual, below zero winter?  First, deer hunting season.  A very few hunters, fewer by far than a decade ago, will stagger drunkenly into the woods before dawn and send the grotesquely overpopulated deer into an unparalleled panic and frenzy.  They’re already crazy because they’re in rut.  The deer will then run into the roads and into cars.  Why don’t they avoid the cars?  Two reasons: first, they think the roads are made of ice, so they’re afraid of running on them.  And second, there really is a  reason for the phrase “a deer in the headlights.”  This doesn’t begin explain why deer run into the sides of passing cars.  And it doesn’t explain why the shoulders of all of the roads are filled with deer eyes reflecting headlights and waiting for an unfortunate moment to run into the road.

Open Thread: in which I whine about “winter” cold

Gawd I hate cold! Hate it hate it hate hate it. I am a tropical girl.

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I’ll proceed with my Winter Whine is a minute, but for penance, I am also going to link you to one little useful essay over at FDL re dry skin issues/remedies. It’s one of the best I’ve ever seen (and Ive read a lot of ’em!)

There. Okay, now… listen. These are several words that are just not in my vocabulary, or else they have a different definition than you might have:

Garage.

Basement.

Furnace.