Winter announced itself a bit earlier than usual this year. In December it settled in with a fair bit of snow, though some warm spells melted a lot of it. We had our annual January Thaw but are in the deep freeze now.
Maybe it’s winter. Maybe it’s the insanity of the last decade catching up with me. I find myself decidedly in the blogging blahs (and fishing ain’t gonna help).
But let’s see if I can whip up another edition of Friday Notes.
Winter (again), and in a pretty big way. As in shovel, shovel, shovel, brrrr…
It seems pretty clear at this point we’ll have snow for Christmas.
Winter, that is.
Last evening, we had rain that turned to snow after midnight. The result, of course, it a bit of an icy mess.
This post begins with a bit of what I see as good news. We’re exactly one month away from Winter Solstice — December 21st at 15:03 UTC. That’s 9:03 AM USA Central Time, and I set posts to publish at 9:14 AM, so by the time you read this, it’s just under a month away.
Cue regular Solstice-Equinox reminder that the day-length changes very slowly at the Solstices and very rapidly at the Equinoxes [cue regular link: Solar Derivative].
Until then, here’s another edition of Friday Notes.
February 15, and winter finally decided show up:
And it’s awfully pretty, I gotta give it that!
Long-time readers may remember my Three Winter Questions about When It Will Snow: by Halloween? by Thanksgiving? by Christmas? Each year the answers vary. Most years, though, the first answer is no.
Not this year. Bad news for trick-n-treatin’ kids.
Last month I put out two editions of Friday Notes, and this month I almost missed posting any (today being my last chance). To some extent, that’s just normal ebb and flow, but it’s also that I’ve been distracted by Real Life™ (such as it is).
I’ve been doing a lot of (in many cases rather interesting) reading lately — words going in rather than out — and I think any writer will tell you that’s the easier direction. Sometimes the much easier direction.
But I do have some notes (and pictures)…
So. Here we are in 2023. Weird. Very weird. As I’ve said many times, I remember wondering whether the year 1984 would turn out to be anything like its infamous eponymous book. And the year 2001, also famous but more from the movie than the book, once seemed like the very distant future to me.
And now I find myself two decades beyond the very distant future. (And still no flying cars or Moon vacation resorts.) Down here on Earth, in Minnesota, our mild winter finally got its act together and gave us a proper winter snowstorm. (Oh, boy, did it ever.)
I’m still recovering from all the shoveling plus a full week with my pal, Bentley!
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful…” Bad enough that it’s three degrees above zero as I write this (with the high today only four degrees). But there’s a winter storm warning in effect until 3:00 AM tomorrow morning. (Severity: Moderate; Possible threat to life or property.) We’ve had 2.3 inches of snow so far with another 7.2 inches expected.
But we’re Minnesotans, and we expect this stuff. Wouldn’t be a proper winter without a bunch of puffy frozen water covering everything. And people scraping various forms of it off their cars. The Minnesota Winter Ballet!
More importantly: Merry Winter Solstice! Less than two hours away as I write this…
Since my last post, I’ve been metaphorically becalmed. Which might sound nice, but it’s a term sailors use when there’s no wind, and they’re stuck in one place. Lately, I’ve felt as if there was no wind in my sails.
Some of that is seasonal. The short days, and then that damned “falling back” with its even earlier sunsets. The winter cold and the joy/misery of snow. (I genuinely do enjoy getting outside and shoveling, but it gets harder every year. Growing old is a pain.)
I thought maybe I could kickstart myself with a Friday Notes post.
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