Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Weather +Climate

Snow There

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Samhain                                                       Thanksgiving Moon

The roads are clear.  Less than 24 hours after 16″ of snow.  We have great snow removal.  It’s a genuine and deserved source of pride.  Even yesterday, when the weather folks said no traveling except for emergencies, you would have been amazed at the apparent number of them.  So many folks on the road.  Weather does not keep Minnesotans at home, especially cold or snowy weather.

In the heart of the snow yesterday I saw several cars with trees tied to their tops, headed home for the start of Christmas decoration.  Not having a tree was, at least for some, emergency enough to justify a long trip to the tree farm.

This is a heavy snow that sits upon branches in curvilinear shapes formed by some combination of sticky flakes, branch shapes and wind.  It gives every view that Christmas post-card look.  It won’t last.  This kind of snow is early season snow.  Later on, the snow will become lighter, fluffy, what the skiers call powder.  It’s possible, if this winter follows the norm, which is a big if these days, that this snow will still be on the ground late into February.

We don’t have a lot of snow here, but what we do have often sticks around for the season because what we do have is cold.  The snow reinforces the cold since it has a high albedo, reflecting the sun’s warmth right back into the atmosphere.

Weather +Climate

Winter. Yes.

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Samhain                                                                    Thanksgiving Moon

Sitting here, the gas stove burning away behind me, the weather system panel above showing 19 degrees outside.  The patio furniture has snow cover easily at the 14-16 inch level.  The patio umbrella, still outside to my surprise, has a conical hat that looks a lot like the pope’s bee hive crown.  The bees have formed themselves into balls, crawling over each other to keep the entire colony warm.

Outside the window here the view is now white and sculpted as opposed to yesterday’s green-brown and late fall dismal.  The world narrows now, down to the yard, the house.  Inside baking and writing and sewing and dogs sleeping.  Outside the world has become Arctic.

These are the days that people notice, those not living in a northern climate, and wonder, why do they live there?  It’s a fair question.  We wonder the same about Phoenix in September.  Florida in hurricane season.  Las Vegas and L.A. in a drought.  Yet we have our preferences, we humans.  Those of us who live here love the change, the magical transformation snow brings.  We know how to dress for the cold, to enjoy it.

If you want to see the north in its true dress, come visit in late December or January.  Then.  Then you’ll see us at our happiest.

Weather +Climate

Winter. Of a Sudden.

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Samhain                                                        Thanksgiving Moon

From no snow to 8-15″, maybe more.  And I have to drive into the museum.  Not good.  Still.  Gotta do it.

I love the snow.  Kate and I just located a snow plower yesterday.  Now we’ll have our first push.  That’s the term the guy used.

Up till now the yard has been visible, brown and patchy.  Now, it’s gone, clad in white and buried.  The view out my window.  Winter.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Weather +Climate

Ring a Ding, Hear Them Sing, Holiseason Is Here!

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Samhain                                                                      Fallowturn Moon

Geese honking, flying in some direction, no longer always south.  Trucks with rickety wooden sides piled high with split oak come into the cities to sell firewood door to door.  Golf carts head south on flat bed trucks.  Irrigation company trucks haul air compressors behind them to blow out irrigation systems.  Bee colonies board trucks headed for California, Texas, Florida where crops can be pollinated over our winter.  Signs for various aspects of deer processing go up.  County Market near us has been advertising sausage mixes and consultation with experts.

Soon the early Christmas trees attached to the tops of cars will appear on Round Lake Boulevard, cut at the cut your own place north of us.  The skies have already turned gray, the wind chill.  Snow comes first in this month, too.

All Hallow’s today.  In one interesting variation on this theme I found that in some traditions this is the day the souls of those who died in the last year are judged.  Cheery thought, eh?

We have entered, according to my sacred calendar, holiseason.  It stretches from Samhain to Epiphany and includes Samhain, All Souls, Día de los Muertos  Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and Epiphany but also Hanukkah, Posada, Deepavali (Diwali), Advent, Boxing Day, the Mayan 5 useless days at the end of the year and my favorite, my low holy day, the Winter Solstice.

So light those candles, dig out the decorations, crank up the holiday music and let’s party like it’s Holiseason 2012.

Weather +Climate

Trick or Treat?

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Fall                                                                          Fallowturn Moon

Trick or treat?  As Halloween, or Samhain as some of us neo-pagans refer to it, lies just a day ahead, mother nature has once again cranked up the volume.  The world is changing! Folks up and down the eastern seaboard have no power, but plenty of water, wind and tragedy.  Here we sit in the middle of the continent, faraway from these ocean driven weather monsters, hoping that friends and relatives out there are ok.  Definitely trick this year for them.

(CNN picture from Monday as Sandy headed inland.)

We’re no strangers to meteorological danger, but ours tends to come in early spring and summer when the heat powers up tornadoes and derechoes; then again in the winter, when moist Gulf air combines with slumping Arctic cold to create blizzards.  Right now we’re in the low excitement season as far as weather goes.

Look for our annual Celtic new years post tomorrow as the thinning of the veil between this world and the other world makes crossing over easier.

Garden, Myth and Story, Weather +Climate

This and that

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Fall                                                            Fallowturn Moon

Put my 500 word essay on a reducing diet and got it down to 350.

Spent much of the day trying–again–to reorganize my space so there’s room for all my books plus art plus travel souvenirs plus computers, desk and me.

Kate and I harvested greens today, the last of them, and Kate put up another large batch of low country greens.  We’ve got onions and tomatoes in the refrigerator plus carrots and leeks in the ground.

Looked out back today, south, up toward the poplars, the tallest trees on our property.  A big gust of wind blew threw them and a rain of yellow-orange leaves flew into the air.  As the air filled with dancing, falling leaves, a bird flew through them, headed west.  With the gray sky it was a perfect fall moment.

Health, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate

Jason and the Argonauts

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Fall                                                                                   Harvest Moon

The Harvest Moon has waned almost to New.  Leaves have begun to disappear, going from haute couture to essentials during the Harvest Moon’s month.  The temperature has taken a turn toward the cool, too, welcome in this household though not necessarily in others.

Working out stalled for me when I felt an ouch beyond what I felt made good sense.  On Monday I have my post-op visit and should have better information then.  I walk and lift modest weight with no twinge now, so I imagine I’ll be back to working out as soon as next week.  My capacity to recover quickly from this operation reinforces the resistance work I’ve done over the years.

Spent this morning dipping myself in the waters of the Jason and Medea story, Book VII of the Metamorphoses.   It was hard.  Not sure what happens, but some days the translating flows, other times it comes as if clotted and running through a pipe with bends and twists.  Today was a clotted and twisted day.  This is where we get the story of the golden fleece among other narratives.

A bit more now in the afternoon, just to see if I can bounce past the morning’s grind.

I also have the week 3 quiz to do in the Greek and Roman Mythology class.  Probably tomorrow.  Without much effort beyond review of my notes I’m hitting about 92% and that’s fine.  I could pump it up, but I have no need.  Look for a post in the next few days about some interesting things I’ve learned about the Odyssey and about myth.  Interesting to me, anyhow.

Art and Culture, Myth and Story, Weather +Climate

How Raven Became Black

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Fall                                                              Harvest Moon

Another brilliant blue day, with slashes of orange and red, sky filled with high white clouds. These northern fall days expand the mind, let it reach out beyond the horizon, taking the breadth and height of it all into the soul, the inner life growing proportionally.  No problem with this season growing longer.

Lights out at the MIA this morning.   I wasn’t there, but apparently security gates came wheeling down in the galleries and the place went dark for an hour or two.  Very dark in certain areas.  I imagine the Japanese galleries and the Pacific Islands and the Islamic and maybe Southeast Asia would pitch black.  They have no window light.  None.  Wonder which images came to life?

Our afternoon tour got delayed because the kids were at the Children’s Theatre, attached physically to the museum, and it went dark, too, delaying their show.  This was a big group, 153 kids altogether.

Since I’m taking a class on mythology, it’s worth recounting here a frequent occurrence at one of my favorite objects:  the Transformation Mask by Kwakwaka’wakw sculptor Richard Hunt. (both pictures from the MIA website)  I tell a story about Raven, who had white feathers, then met Gray Eagle’s daughter, fell in love and visited her father’s dwelling.  Raven finds the sun, the moon, the stars, water and fire inside Gray Eagle’s lodge, steals all of these things and gives them to the people who have been living in darkness.  In spreading fire he carries a brand in his beak and his feathers are burnt.  That’s how Raven became black.

I tell this story as it is and leave it.  Most of the time, some kid asked, “Is it real?”  In return I ask, “What do you think?”  Usually kids accept the story as “real.”  I don’t press this interpretation, but I happen to agree with them.  It’s true because it explains the birth of the Raven clan and its totemic animal.  In this sense, too, it is real.  As real it gets.

Health, Weather +Climate, Writing

Wednesday Big Event: Flu Shot

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Fall                                                                      Harvest Moon

Worked on revising Missing this am, then went out with my retired spouse to the local CVS, into the minute clinic and we got our flu shots.  A real treat.  I don’t use them for anything else, but for getting a flu shot, the minute clinics are perfect.

Our dwarf lilac (now huge) has dropped all of its leaves though most trees and shrubs continue to hang to at least a few.  The only other with no leaves at all is the ash in the vegetable garden.  It feels like November, or an old-fashioned October.

When we went out today, there scallop shell cirrus high in a blue blue sky, a bright sun and various shades of red and orange all round, reflected back to us from Round Lake.  A northern fall day.  Just right.