First: weather. Below is a tw**t from ABC News, with a time-lapse video showing the snow piling up on a Virginia porch. Be sure to click the blue arrow. After seeing that, don’t complain about your weather unless you live on the east coast of the U.S.! (h/t for tw**ts to Matthew Cobb.)
Timelapse video shows the snow piling up in Virginia during #blizzard2016: https://t.co/OKW07yHdnfhttps://t.co/VkNooIYerw
— ABC News (@ABC) January 24, 2016
And apparently Courtney, an inveterate swimmer, decided to dive in:
https://twitter.com/court_marie02/status/691027300113063937
New York City was hit hard, and all transportation in the city has ground to a halt: people are skiing in the streets! I’d love to be there now. Here’s part of the New York Times map showing, as of 3 a.m. today, the amount of snow that’s fallen on the eastern seaboard (click on the screenshot for the complete map). Report in below if you’re one of those affected:
I’ll give only one event in history: on this day in 1984, the first Apple MacIntosh went on sale. I’ve used nothing other than Macs since I first touched a keyboard. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has decided that her desire to go out outweighed the cold white stuff that she doesn’t like stepping in, so she went for a walk with Malgorzata and Andrzej.
A: I thought that you were staying in the garden.
Hili: I’ve changed my mind. I’m going with you.
Ja: Myślałem, że zostajesz w ogrodzie.
Hili: Zmieniłam zdanie, idę z wami.
Meanwhile, Leon and staff are also experiencing the cold, but voluntarily, as they’re on a winter hike in the Polish mountains. But I’m told it’s quite cold there, and Leon shivers when he goes out. So, at least for the moment, Leon is not hiking: he stays home by the fire while his staff goes out.
Leon: It’s cold and windy. You go and I will guard the fire.
A scent from where Leon is staying:
Sympathies to all on the eastern seaboard for whom this storm is a real crippler!
Appreciate the warm thoughts. We got 35″ in Maryland on the eastern edge of the Appalachian mountains. I’m shoveled out and waiting for the municipal snow plows to do their usual trick of blocking my driveway again.
Well I do know what that’s like–*urge to kill!*
But, 35″??! I thought y’all Marylanders considered yourselves South. 😀
The South?! Please observe the niceties: “border state”.😊
Truth is, parts of MD really are Southern and parts really are not.
As for the weather, my area gets walloped like this about every 7-8 years. Far enough inland for cold air masses, close enough to the coast for a lot of moisture. We probably won’t get 35″ total the rest of this winter.
😀
You mean there’s more to Maryland than Bal’mer? I didn’t think it was big enough to have “parts.”
(J/K! I actually lived in Towson for a few months, way back when…)
Your area sounds like it might be quite lovely at times. 🙂
It is an open secret that everyone complains about the weather.
The average snowing was predicted to be 100 cm if I understand correctly, which tops the record snow of 80 cm here in Sweden. (In Uppsala 31st of December 1970 of all places and all times; https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrema_sn%C3%B6fall_i_Sverige .)
The inveterate swimmer doesn’t know much about diving though, she gave me a scare. You do not dive where you cannot check for obstacles.
She scared the crap out of me too.
One of my class mates when I was at uni did a dive into the sea from beach in Portugal on the first day of his fist-summer vacation.
– Head-butted a sand bar or some other object.
– Broke his neck.
– Was very lucky that one of his friends realised there was a problem before he drowned, unconscious and tetraplegic.
– Was medivacced back to the UK with the traditional “shut down the airport motorway for a walking-speed ambulance” traffic disruptions.
– And spent 8 months in a spinal injuries specialist hospital before being extraordinarily lucky to walk out of there.
If someone knows this idiot girl, she needs a serious sitting-down and talking-to.
I suspect that was familiar territory for her and she knew exactly what she was diving into. The area could even have been probed before the picture was set up.
Agreed. If that was her yard, and especially if they’d been keeping an eye on watching the snow pile up, she knew exactly what was there (apparently nothing but snow).
I’ve clearly been spending too long sharing an office with the Safety Officer.
Even if she had done her due-diligence, she was a dangerous fucking idiot (pardon my French – I mean “une tete de merde”) for posting that sort of thing without making if fucking clear that she’d done her due diligence.
We communally crapped ourselves when our bent-necked classmate slipped on mud and did a backwards prat-fall then started complaining of a sore neck. We were debating there and then if we should bring in a paraffin budgie, but he decided to walk out for himself.
I’m almost afraid to ask, but…paraffin budgie??
A.k.a. a sky hook.
Air-Sea rescue helicopter.
“Oh, it’s time to go home from the oil rig. I’ll go and spray some kerosene on the helicopter deck and try to call down a paraffin budgie to take us home.”
One of my colleagues wrote some folk songs and poems which he published under the title “Flight of the Paraffin Budgie: A North Sea Chronicle” and WTF ??? they’re wanting 300 effin bucks for it! 6 bucks a page!!
By the four balls of L.Ron Hubbard, Joe Smith and Helena Blavatsky I’ve seen some laughing prices, but that is a LAUGHING PRICE!
Cool, I really love professional jargon. 😀 As to the book, surely you could “be the first to review this item?”
I’d have to read it again … which mean going to the storage locker and finding it. Then learning how to criticise poetry and/ or folk music. Wrong person for that job – technically I managed to fail my Eng Lit (since it didn’t enter into consideration for entering a Science faculty). I think I turned up for all the papers, but I don’t think I wasted any time beyond doing the first pass on each paper.
I always thought that Swedes handled the winter rather well. In Canada, we just complain the whole time. I figure it’s because we could drive a few hours south into the US to experience nice warm weather and knowing that makes us dispair.
Well, Diane, I lived in southern Minnesota for more than three decades. I always said that complaining was a survival mechanism, and without we would all have died. What always annoyed me were the “optimists” who would look out the window at the accumulating ice and/or snow and say, “It could be worse.” “It could be better,” always seemed more appropriate.
I also lived on the east coast in Maryland, School would be closed at one inch (25 mm for the Canadians). Today my former home area has more than 20 inches (50+ cm). And, of course, the climate change deniers are having a field day.
I suspect that was meant to be “scene,” but given the atmospheric play of sunlight on snow powder, or breath mist, “scent” does seem appropriate.
Yes, the diver gave me a scare also. When I was a small child I dove into a kiddie pool and smacked my head on the bottom. I’m lucky I’m not in a wheelchair.
I’m located in Silver Spring, MD. MY apt building is right across the street from the MD/DC line. The spotter at NOAA (whose headquarters is actually right down the street) says we got 26 inches. Fortunately I have a crack team of landscape specialists to clear the lot. Probably a lot more dicey out a ways from the urban nucleus.
Today is crystal clear. Sun’s out. The wind is still whipping pretty good though and it’s very cold.
We are digging out here in Maryland too. The hubs has a snow thrower, and he is a motorhead kind of guy. I think he is in heaven at the moment!
Not to be too technical Andrea, but I think the term is snow blower. Kids are snow throwers.
Don’t complain about the weather!! But I’m a Canadian, it’s part of my national heritage to complain about the weather!
Yesterday was nice though. Finally the sun came out and the skies were blue! When the moon rose, it was crazy big!
Not complaining about the weather. 600mm (24″) here, with drifts to 2m. Started shoveling at 7am, found my truck under a drift at 10am, had it cleared to move by noon. Not the worst, but I still don’t like it. Would never, ever move back to Canada. 25years in NJ, and still haven’t seen a winter as bad as average up north. People look at me funny when I tell them I came here for the mild winters.
My furry brother (feral as a kitten, picked me when he was 4 to 6months old, 4.5yrs now) HATES being cooped up inside, and hates that I won’t let him out unsupervised. Opened the door this morning, he stood up on his back legs to look over the snow (500mm at the door, on the covered porch), touched it with his paw for about 3.1ns, and scooted back in to curl up on his wool blanket in front of the window by the radiator. He has a hard life.
I’d move to Vancouver in a nanosecond. Downright temperate compared to Michigan.
Nice kitteh story. 🙂 How did he pick you?
He was living in a dumpster behind a redneck bar. Meowed constantly and loudly, would’t go near anyone. I stepped outside (january 4 years ago) and he came over to me. Then set pitons and climbed my leg, got as far as my arm and decided that he’d rather snuggle than finish the climb. The owner of the bar said he just showed up a while before and none of the staff had any interest. No food involved. He is still attention (cuddle/play) motivated over food.
Awwww, that’s so sweet! 🙂
“…set pitons…” Ha, ha, purrfect! We also used to have a cat into technical climbing…
The biggest number, 42″, appears to be at Harpers Ferry, W Va, 50+ miles below the Mason-Dixon Line. A line along the spine of that cartogram pretty much delineates the Appalachian Trail. I walked every inch of the elongated shaded blob. But when it came to such activity, I was a Summertime Soldier and Sunshine Patriot.
“I’ve used nothing other than Macs since I first touched a keyboard.”
You, good sir, are clearly not a gamer. 😉
My first computer was a Mac (1994, I’m a late-adopter — just got my first “smart” phone this August).
But after Windows 95, the PCs were pretty much equivalent and all my work computers have bee PCs, and everyone I exchange files with is on PCs, so I changed over. The computers also cost a lot less. (I’m still well conversant in both OSs.)
I also did not like Steve Jobs’ overlording attitude that all must operate their computers in conformance with his personal preferences (e.g.: thou shalt not have both a delete key and a backspace key. Thou shalt call thine backspace key the delete key. Thou also may not indulge in arrow keys or partake of the right click menu; but instead must always cleave to the single button mouse and remain faithful to it at all times).
For the same reason I did not get an ipod or itunes. (I have a tiny MP3 player and I really like it. I don’t want to be chained to Apple.)
I did get an iphone (6+) after asking many, many people their preferences (people with androids, blackberrys, iphones). And I am liking it. A very intelligently designed operating system. And hardware.
I am not a gamer either. Zero interest.
Nice videos, though the young lady diver scared me (for her neck).
The snow-porch video is clearly in a back-eddy of the prevailing wind. It built up a big drift (and depth) after the wind started up.
Our back porch does something similar in big snows, often going 2X as deep as the general fall of snow. One year, it almost closed off with the drift hanging on the eave above.
Which is not to disparage in any way the giant dump they just got out east. That is a huge snow fall, no matter which way you slice it.
And, Re. Jerry’s wish to be in NY, my nephew and his guy were out yesterday frolicking in the snow in Manhattan, where they live — and it looked like New Yorkers were out having a great time in the snowed in city. Well done!