Winter                                     Waning Moon of Long Nights

Warm up coming.  Low this a.m. only -16.

Forecast

The consensus among forecasts and forecasters has some snow coming to us tomorrow and Thursday, perhaps enough to cause problems for the commute, but not enough to bother us at home here in the northern ‘burbs.  Another consensus has that snow followed by more arctic air, with windchills Friday clocking in at -20 to -30.  Again there is a consensus that the next week should see a real warm-up with temperatures perhaps rising as high as 30 degrees.

Each Minnesotan will get a cold-weather merit badge mailed out by the Association of Weather Warriors (Aww) sometime around the summer solstice.  Suitable for the car window  or now in lapel pins as well.

How does it go?  There are many cold Minnesotans.  There are many bold Minnesotans.

Winter                                    Waning Moon of Long Nights

Each year around this time we begin to get the full slump of arctic air, air not held back by the jet stream or weather patterns here in the upper lower 48.  Turns out it’s cold up there at the north pole even with global warming.  That means we get these stretches of what people in Sun City would call cool weather.

Right now the trend is up.  The low last night was -16.  This does not,  however, qualify as a grab the beach towels and sunscreen sort of warm up.  Nope, this is a Minnesota heat wave where cars start again, that kid with his tongue on the lamp post might be able to get free and ma can slide the clothes off the line since the clothes pin will open again.  It’s not so much of a warm-up that Ole has to bring his pick-up in off the lake or that Peder has to give up on that snowmobiling idea.

The trend, to be more accurate, is up briefly, then back down again.  Oh, well.

Winter                                      Waning Moon of Long Nights                -13 (low -25)

Well, we did hit -25 again, this time at 6:49 a.m.  The sun seems like an exercise in futility, but even with the high albedo of 100% snow cover, we still get solar gain.

Try to imagine what we’d be like here without the sun.  That’s the reason all those folks spend so much time celebrating the daylight side of the Winter Solstice.  If the sun kept disappearing for longer and longer chunks of time, and the temperature grew more and more severe, then, if  you had little understanding of astronomy and believed the sun’s return depended on the favor of this god or that, you could have come into the time of winter solstice hoping, but not being sure, that the sun would return.

Think how happy you would be with even this weak soup of solar particles.  At least there is light, and, thank Brigit or Apollo or whoever, it seems like there is more light.

More cold.  More often.