Weather?

 "How Cold Was It?"

Ian Holm   The Day After Tomorrow

It was warm while we were in D.C., but that is to be expected, I guess. Some plants were beginning to come up, trees were budding. The locals said that that was pretty much standard for the area; not much chance of cold snap or killing frost...
And this was said in the neighborhood of February 18th.

Just a year ago in D.C. there was 36 inches of snow in the last week of January and a cold little ice-thing trans-ing into rain on the morning of the 15th of February, which was a birthday we all remember well at Holy Cross, Germantown. I took a photo of the car with the mother-to-be pulling away, heading to Germantown, and there were little vermilion jewels of moisture made by the car's rear lights on the camera lens, caught forever in the photo.

And when we came home this year it was moderately moderate; it turned cold 1, maybe 2 nights; the weather forecasters promised a storm of sufficient proportions to merit a name - I think it was Winter Storm Ozzie - but everything petered out.
We got rain, but not too much.

And I don't like naming winter storms. For some reason, a winter storm with a name makes it impossible for me to keep track of what's going on. I mean, they name hurricanes and monsoons, and often there are like 1 or 1-and-a-half hurricanes blowing or 1, 2, 3 maybe hurricane wanna-bes: a tropical storm, a major depression in the Atlantic, and some sort of witches brew in the Pacific... but there is usually only one big winter storm at a time on the continental USA, isn't there?

I remember during the polar vortex of 4 years ago when the temperature went to -30 F one night, I did not have to wonder which polar vortex was causing that plunge.

Anyway, I'm glad Trump is undermining climate change science 'cuz the Warms (or Shirts) has beat the Colds (or Skins) in the meterological pick-up game, and what really is the point: Lucifer always has the ace up his sleeve. It is in the 40s again today and it won't apparently turn cold again until I put away the winter clothes and bring out the spring outfits.

In Scotland and Northern Europe there seems to be an cold, odd sequel to The Day After Tomorrow and I expect another Ian Holm to freeze in another laboratory on another Grampian mountain range...

Grampian Mountains

Th' uncommon Winter bids fair
our subniveal discontents lay bare.

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