It was -14°F when I got up this morning, with a cheery forecast of 1-3" of global warming to fall overnight tonight. Then it's subzero lows and single digit highs until we get a brief warmup on Friday and a chance for more snow over the weekend. By Sunday night we're back to subzero lows overnight. Mother Nature is giving it to us good and hard this year, though it could be even worse in the snow department.
It sounds like this round of deep freeze won't reach as far south as the one did a few weeks ago. In that one we only got down to -23°F, missing the record by 4 degrees. How low did it go where you are?
I've been really struggling with whatever cold/flu bug hit back at the beginning of the year. I started to get better about a week after I caught it and then I had a relapse. I got better again, but had another relapse this past Friday with an unproductive cough I couldn't control and a fever. I even thought about going to the hospital Friday night, but I was finally able to get it under control with some cough medicine and get to sleep. That put me on the upswing again and I feel pretty good today, not that I'm taking anything for granted. At least my appetite is back today. I've lost close to 15 pounds the last three weeks, which maybe isn't all bad, but I'm sure it's not the right way to do it.
Getting back to that big chill earlier this month, even in the throes of illness I was able to take some amusement from the defensiveness of the Global Warming crowd. Yes, a big old honking Arctic air mass does not disprove Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Disruption. Those of us in the Upper Midwest see them most winters at least once, though the latest was on the colder than normal side.
The real difference with that one was how far down it reached into the rest of the United States, to the point where it triggered a media reaction, which triggered the defensive spluttering of Climate Change hysterics all the way to the White House. It was hilarious to see John Holdren get all pissy about Climate Change heretics using a weather event to attack his beliefs, then turn right around and try to use the same weather event to bolster the case for his own Climate Change beliefs.
It's a shame that that idiot is advising the former leader of the free world, but at least he's putting out some comedy gold while he's doing his part to drive the US right into the ground.
For the record: Even the repeated Arctic blasts we are getting in Minnesota this winter by themselves don't say anything about our long term climate. They just mean we are having a cold winter, though that does serve to rebuke those who were saying such winters were a thing of the past about 10 years ago.
I don't need vapid soundbites about the polar vortex to see how weather patterns form, have formed, my entire lifetime. We see it every year by the way the jet stream behaves, whether we get early snow blanketing the ground and cooling the air, and from the weather patterns from the Pacific. The climate science is far more complex, of course, but if one pays attention it is generally not too hard to see how a winter up here is shaping up.
For a more scientific take, see this from meteorologist Cliff Mass.
Oh, and bundle up.
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