Weather, or Not category archive

Whenever there is a bit of snow, you see stories of panicky persons buying all the snow shovels.

What happened to the snow shovels they bought during their last panic?

Aside:

The region is suffering under four or so whole inches. That’s almost 10 or 11 centimeters. Oh, the humanity!

Video below the fold because it autoplays on some systems.

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It appears that residents of neither Pennsylvania nor Massachusetts are able to drive in the snow.

Afterthought:

Some years ago, I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on a training gig. When I arrived, the temperature was lower than the windspeed. (The customer had been sending me pictures of his snowbound parking lot for a week, so as to enhance my anticipation of the trip.)

As he drove me to my hotel after the training class, we were engulfed in snow. Visibility was minimal.

I asked, “Tod, is this a white out?”

“No,” he said, “because you can just barely see that,” as he pointed to a shadowy shape that was likely a tree ten feet from the road. At that point, a pick-up careened past us and slid into the ditch.

“Tod,” I said, “it appears that South Dakotans do not know how to drive in the snow.”

He replied, “Frank, no one knows how to drive in the snow.”

I ended up spending an extra night in Sioux Falls because the airport closed the next day. The airline ticket agent was a transplanted Philadelphian. She comped my extra night in a hotel because I was polite to her (she did not have to, as a snow storm is considered an “Act of God” for reaccommodations purposes). (I have found that nasty does not win friends, but does most certainly influence people.)

She told me that the one thing she missed most about Philly was Butterscotch Crimpets. When I got home, I mailed her a box of Tastycakes.

I used to say, that, once you Tastycake, you will never Hostess again.

Now, you can never Hostess again.

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With his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, the Boston Globe’s Luke O’Neill tries to figure out the politics of parking-place savers (those folks who, after digging out a parking place on a public street, then stake a claim to it with a piece of furniture. Along the way, he manages to cite both Locke and Hobbes.

Here’s a bit from his introduction.

Consider the arguments in favor of space-saving: This space is the fruit of my own personal labor. Due to my hard work, I alone have endeavored to stake out for my own benefit a parcel of value, which is now mine to dispense with how I please. Those who wish to avail themselves of parking should follow my virtuous example, and pull themselves up by their shovel-straps.

The counter-argument is no less easily applied to a political point of view: The roads, they say, belong to all. One cannot own what belongs to the people, and the act of shoveling out a space contributes to the greater good, providing more parking for others to enjoy. It is, in effect, a tax one pays for the use of the public space, which is just.

And yet, the more and more people I ask, the analogy breaks down, with many self-identifying progressives saying they are in favor of space-saving.

It doesn’t make sense.

It’s an interesting and wry take on a contentious issue.

I used to fly into Burbank frequently.

On the last bit of the leg from Phoenix, the air lane follows the aqueduct that California used to steal water from the Colorado River. The plane would cross a mountain range and I would see a swath of green lawns, almost every one with a swimming pool in the backyard, all made possible by the Colorado River (which no longer reaches the sea).

I always found the view vaguely disgusting.

The area is crushed under two or three inches of snow. Crushed, I say (just ask the telly vision).

There are rumors of a burgeoning black market in bread and milk, as thawing is not expected to begin until noon. Even our morning paper was an hour late.

Civilization as we know it is doomed absurd.

I’m taking it easy on a snow day.

(Typo corrected.)

. . . but you didn’t hear about it on your telly vision . . . .

Via Job’s Anger.

Anchor Person: Someone said snow. Snow snow snow. Brooklyn Blond, is there snow?

Brooklyn Blond: Yes, there is snow. See the snow. Fall, snow, fall.

Boston Brownette: There is more snow. See the snow fall. Snow is slippery. See the car slip. Slip, car, slip.

New Hampshire Hussy: It also snows in the rural areas. See the snow? There is snow. See the snow fall. Fall, snow, fall.

Anchor person: So you are saying that snow is falling, that snow is slippery?

All together: Yes, see the snow fall. Fall snow, fall. Slip, car, slip. Fall snow, fall. Slip, car, slip. Fall snow, fall. Slip, car, slip. Fall snow, fall. Slip, car, slip. Fall snow, fall. Slip, car, slip. . . . .

Fleeing Philadelphia before the threatened Snowmageddon which is expected to be much worse than the Saturday night Snowmageddom, pictured here.

Addendum, That Very Evening:

Looks like I got out of town just in time.

Some years ago in the mid-70s, some of my friends and I took a driving trip through the Outer Banks. It was my first visit there.

When I saw homes built dangerously close to the water (homes that now are on stilts because the Atlantic Ocean is gonna do what it’s gonna do), I recall remarking that “Americans go all stupid when someone says ‘waterfront property.'”

According to my local rag, that may be starting to change.

We had weather.

Collateral damage:

At least there’s enough water left for skinny-dipping.

Barely.

Lupin Lodge, the clothing-optional resort in the parched wooded hills above Los Gatos, is perilously close to running out of water. So close that it’s landed on California’s official drought-watch list as one of five community water districts forced to haul in weekly truckloads of H2O.

Bare facts at the link.

California is sinking into the sea, just not in the manner that many predicted.

The ground is sinking because farmers and water agencies throughout the Central Valley are pumping groundwater heavily from far beneath the Earth’s surface to make up for the lack of rain. The problems caused by this sinkage are many, with no easy fix in sight.

Vlot’s wells are collapsing, crushed by the shifting soils. The dam Hurley depends on to divert water into the company’s canals from the San Joaquin River has sunk so far – about 3 feet in just five years – that the river is threatening to spill over. If that happens, he’ll have less water to distribute to farmers who grow cotton, tomatoes and a range of other crops.

Cali’s not the only place with that sinking feeling.

Here’s the good news:

Virginia’s highest court has ruled that the American Tradition Institute (ATI), a free-market think tank that promotes climate science denial, must pay damages to the University of Virginia and former professor Michael Mann for filing a frivolous lawsuit against them. The decision comes in a case that has sparked controversy about the abuse of public records laws to harass climate scientists.

The bad news: the amount of the award was $250.00.

Via Delaware Liberal.

Science is taught at the University of Farmers!