I refer you to Jane’s blog for the full and gruesome details, but suffice it to say that Dell slipped a stitch or two in its ordering, and the new computer is scheduled for delivery Feb 9 instead of Jan 28. On the other hand, we had a good trip, splurged on a Cougarburger (not the content: the university football team down in Pullman WA, where the best commercial burgers in the local universe can be had) and a blackberry/crunchy peanut butter shake, completely blew our diet, and had a very nice drive through the Palouse hills.
We are NOT having the weather that canceled over 5000 flights in the US — we were nearly 50 degrees yesterday, a day which seems to point toward spring, time to trim the apple tree and throw phosphate on the wisteria—
But you never trust Washington weather between now and St. Paddy’s Day. Snow is not out of the picture, and is in fact a possibility for Sunday night.
My profound sympathies for any of you on the Eastern seaboard. Looks like a lot of shoveling. Hope you are indoors, in your own places, warm and safe.
We here in NH are. I am reminded of Daddy, who used to call from Pearl River LA each time we had a major winter storm and tell me what was blooming in the yard. Right now it will be the camellias. Does anyone else get the idea that he wanted me to move home?
We’ve had temps in the 70’s here in Tulsa. Unbelievably warm.
Here in Houston, I’m not sure if it has gotten below freezing inside the city all winter. It has dipped close a few times, for two or three days at most. Chilly or cold at night. But not so normal, even for here.
We normally have weather swings in winter, with days or weeks of cold weather and days or weeks of warm weather. So it’s possible, say, to have 70 degree weather at Christmas or other times in winter. But it’s also normal to have at or below freezing temps at night.
I am not sure if, officially, it has been warmer, or if it’s any more so than usual, but it has definitely ~felt~ unseasonably warmer overall this winter, to me here. (Except this weekend, when due to a mixup about auto-pay, my gas was off for the weekend and I had to get reconnected and have a minor heater repair.) But still, warmer than usual, I think.
I am therefore expecting another sizzling hot summer. Yee-ikes!
Hey, Tulrose, please wave to relatives of mine in Norman and Duncan and OKC!
Puts hand out window to the west and waves …
And this is the year we put in a backup generator. Oh well, there’s always the very heavy wet snow that shows up in April.
Got 28 windy inches on the Cape. The power stayed on, though, and we’re snugly hunkered in and well-supplied. Our road isn’t plowed very well, but we could get out if we had to. Getting lots of exercise.
In my years in Oklahoma, I observed that apricot trees got the worst of it—they are so trusting, and leaf when encouraged. Oklahoma weather lies to them—they inevitably get suckered into leaf—and then in April comes the cold front that will, if it doesn’t kill them, at least assure there are no apricots. I think an Oklahoma apricot has to be the rarest fruit going.
Apricots are notoriously early bloomers – that’s how they can be ripe in June – but they’re no good for any place that gets hard cold after February. Even in California, they’re really only for mild-winter areas. (Peaches and nectarines, though, can handle it.)
That surprises me. Our favorite holiday destination for decades has been the Swiss canton Valais (Wallis), which among other things is famous for its apricot production. Those mountains are high enough, even in the valleys where the orchards are, I’d expect it to get below freezing occasionally well past February. We stay a lot higher up than those orchards, but we’ve had a sprinkling of snow at night in early June as well as half September.
Maybe if things don’t warm up early, the trees don’t wake up and get blasted by the later cold spell.
Very likely the ground is staying cold and the nights are cold, so they don’t get the false ‘welcome’ of an Oklahoma spring!
Supposed to be around 63 tomorrow here below the Mogollon Rim in north-central Arizona, down in the 30s at night. But a front is moving in on Friday with rains that’ll drop us down in the 40s. Wild winter again — we get 11 inches of snow in 2 days non-stop storm at New Year’s which was all melted in a week. It’s been so warm since that the junipers and the cypress are nearly in full pollen bloom and now we’re looking at another 3 to 4 months of allergy hell. One week of winter at 5000 ft elevation. Sheesh.
It is RAINING. In JANUARY. That is just so WRONG here I can’t even express how wrong it is. We’ve been setting all time records for high temperatures all month. Tell Boston to send our snow back!
We got about 2 feet here just on the north side of Boston with the long, long and windy storm. It started flurrying around 10:00 in the morning Monday and seriously snowing around 4:00 in the afternoon and on Tuesday evening when going to bed around midnight, it was still snowing. Woke up this morning (Wednesday) to blue sky and lots, lots of snow!
It’s been a fine two days at home, bouts of shoveling of light and fluffy snow and then indoors to read, or bake or knit or, today, do some work on the computer for my day job. The college cancelled classes from Monday to tonight, so I didn’t have either evening geology or linguistics classes to seriously prep for either…. I even took a (very) short snowshoe turn around our backyard and woody gorge behind it before it got dark, mostly to try out the new snowshoes before heading up to New Hampshire this weekend when my Mom and I hope to take part in a moonlight snowshoe hike on Saturday. Not a bad storm all in all.
My power too stayed on. Thank all the Featherless Gods!
The roads are a mess -to put it overly politely. And the drifts spectacular. My road is one and a skinny half car wide now. And when the substantial residuum of snow ices its gonna be interesting. And they say another storm is coming!
I’ve seen some wonderful pictures of Boston yesterday of people sledding down the very steep streets in Beacon Hill and Charlestown. (Which streets are also exceedingly narrow normally. Add the huge drifts and they look like a narrow toboggan run.
I work right on the lower edge of Boston Common… but realize I didn’t even pause today to see what it looks like (other than all white). The subway line I take in to work was working fine but others weren’t and all my colleagues who drove in to town had multi-hour commutes for what normally are half hour-45 minute drives. When I left our building at 6:00pm this evening, the main street was bumper to bumper crawling traffic and a friend who took 2 1/2 hours to drive in this morning called out from her car that she had just taken 45 minutes to come out of the parking garage and around the corner on her way home. Not a day for a pleasant Boston drive.
From someone who has seen Boston traffic, I believe that “pleasant Boston drive” might be an oxymoron. This is a city where the most battered car has right of way.
One of my friends described it as ‘In Massachusetts, the only laws governing motor vehicles are Newton’s’. It’s a slight exaggeration.
Well, I can attest to Newton’s First Law of Motion governing my car on the morning of January 8, 2015…….
I learnt to drive in New Hampshire, (stupidly) let my license expire when I then moved from Vermont to Scotland via a month or so in Maine and had no desire to do the Drivers Test all over again when I found myself living in Massachusetts after three years happily carless in Scotland. Still have no desire to drive around here. Luckily my spouse is a native Bostonian and loves to drive here… but it is a combat sport!
I did find myself crossing the Common today and spotted one kid at least sledding down the lower slope of Beacon Hill where it becomes the Common. Everything is lovely and white… But the traffic still is pretty zooey.
It’s snowing again, by the way, although not heavily, but the temperature is dropping and the wind fierce.
According to our local National Weather Service Office, my area might get hit with 6 – 8 inches of snow on Saturday night and Sunday. Fire up the snow blower again!
We’re now under a Winter Storm Warning from 12:00AM tonight (Saturday) until 7:00AM Monday. I’ve looked at the National Radar mosaic and it’s a HUGE system, lots of moisture in it coming from the Gulf. They’ve given projections of 4 – 7 inches in some areas up to 7 – 10 inches in others. I looked at the radar a couple of minutes ago and the snow is just now coming into my county. Once it starts, it probably won’t stop until either very late tomorrow night, or Monday morning.
I have an appointment on Monday afternoon to see my primary care manager and ask her to refer me to the Hand Clinic in Orthopedics. My left thumb is starting to have the same pains that the right one did before we replaced the lower joint on it. If I do have to have it replaced, it’s an overnight stay in the hospital, and then a month in a bandage until the incision heals, and then a month in a cast. Yuck! Being left-handed, it’s going to be a royal pain for me.
Winter Storm Warning cancelled….the bulk of the snow will be further north. We got about 1/2″ this morning, wet slushy snow, easily pushed off the driveway. It might snow a little bit more today, but no blizzard. So much for Winter Storm Linus “blanketing” the area.
Sinister, are you? I’m so dextrous, how could I survive 2 months without my right hand?
Me too, Paul.
I was always grateful to have broken my LEFT arm—I had troubles enough with the second grade without having to learn to write again. I’m ambidextrous with tools and weapons—when I was in practice I could fence left-handed as well as right, and when using an axe, I simply switch hands to ease fatigue—to the horror of one of the girls’ camp supervisors, who flew across a cane field to admonish me not to do that. I wasn’t even conscious what I’d done to so alarm her. Hey, I wasn’t That Kid who stretched a handful of thin cane across her ankle and let fly with the hatchet. That was messy. And we were, at that time, about 2 miles from main camp…
Another foot of snow is apparently coming to the seacoast of Massachusetts and New Hampshire (maybe elsewhere too, I haven’t looked). I adore snow but have had enough with cancellations of events and classes from it. We’re doing a Housing & Homelessness policy forum at work on Tuesday and tomorrow is supposed to be spent stuffing packets and finishing up last minute details. Worse, tomorrow evening was supposed to be the postponed from last week opening class of my Linguistics course at Cambridge College. We meet once a week, so when a class gets cancelled, it’s felt by the professor… when two classes get cancelled, professor=me seriously panics. So, happy to share the snow wealth with other states!