Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Ya-hoo, Yo-ray, Welcome Winter, Winter Day

Last weekend another deep freeze hit us. We woke up yesterday morning to find the water in the kitchen frozen. (At least the car started. Since we don't use it daily to go to work, we have to start it periodically in these temperatures to warm up the engine.)

It's incredibly stressful, this, day after day of worrying what might break or be ruined in these temperatures, and what the resulting $cost$ will be. Running the water at a trickle con$tantly. Keeping the heat up all day and night in$tead of using the thermostat program that turns it down a bit while we're at work. Returning home during the workday to ensure nothing's frozen, or seized, or broken off. Getting up at night to do the same.

The culprit this time was a high pressure system that traveled southeast from Yukon. A really high pressure system. In fact:
"What we have seen are some incredibly high pressures. I mean, we have high pressure and there's high pressure, but this is really high," David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, told CBC News.

"It's almost as if you could see heads swelling in the Yukon, with all this air just on top of you."
Hmm. There's a mental image. Anyway, we got the water running to the kitchen again. Today, the temperature rose steadily all day. And all evening. Tonight, we're getting hammered by a low pressure system that's bringing 20-30 cm (8-12in) of snow, freezing rain, and rain.

And rising temperatures.

I swear to God, I never welcomed a snowstorm so warmly. Pun fully intended.

ronnie

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4 Comments:

Blogger Sherwood Harrington said...

If you don't mind a comment from Northern California, where the temperatures for the next several days are predicted to be in the mid-60's Fahrenheit, we've got a co-incidence in our blog entries for January 28. Yours, about a beneficial aspect of meteorological conditions that allow snow, and mine about ditto. (If you click on that link, please make sure to click on the image it takes you to for a higher-resolution version. I especially like the little guy at the left in the bowler.)

2:47 a.m.  
Blogger Carl said...

Swelling? High external pressure would make heads shrink, surely?

Hey, we were above freezing for the first time in weeks here on Long Island yesterday. Just long enough to melt our snow into slush, then have it refreeze into giant sheets of ice. Your weather is worse, but I hate walking and driving on ice.

9:16 a.m.  
Blogger ronnie said...

Sherwood, that isn't snow, it's plump rain!

That being said, it's a relly charming picture. I'd like to do more than link to it with your permission - I'd like to post it here, with your permission (with a link to PicShers, of course). I think it'd make a great addition to my posts of winter woe.

Carl, the swelling didn't make any sense to me either. But the meteorologist's palpable excitement just shines through in his breathless comments, doesn't it?

As for your recent weather, I hate that!!! The entire surface of the world the next day consists of two textures: ugly grey flat slippery ice that you have to tentatively slide over; or ugly grey jagged bumpy ice (where the previous snow had been pushed into peaks by car tires) that are going to hurt so much when you fall on them.

We had a similar thaw-freeze a couple of weeks back. I saw three different people fall on the way to or from work; I would've been a fourth if a kind stranger hadn't grabbed my arm as I lost my footing.

Winter - isn't it jolly!

8:26 p.m.  
Blogger Sherwood Harrington said...

Have at it, Ms. Cat; I'd be hono(u)red. It's one of my favo(u)rite rare-Santa-Cruz-snow pictures, too, right up there with this one.

10:44 p.m.  

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