No Snow, @#$%^&*!

[Canotrouge]

Winter for here last night, -35c this morning and didn’t go much above -25c today!!

 

[PeteStaehling]

We haven't even had frost lately, but we did have a tornado roll through a couple miles away yesterday.

 

[ppine]

My daughter lives in Tallahassee.
I have lived in California with not much snow. I never liked it and moved.

 

[Guest]

To hell with snow.

Or, as often we receive, ice/sleet/freezing rain events, that take out rural overhead power lines, leaving us in the dark, with no internet, TV or phone.

Our first real snow of the year is forecast for Sunday/Monday/Tuesday. I hope the worst of it holds off until late enough in the morning on Sunday that I can run out to pick up the Sunday WAPO and NYT; days of reading material.

And then park the truck, or already rusted out 20 year old hooptie van, at the top of the long dirt hillside driveway. I am not putting chains on the truck to drive 440 feet.

Screw it, we got toilet paper and milk, and I hit the hardware store and Case & Keg this morning. I’m good at least a week.

 

[gumpus]

Beautiful pics and great perspective canotrouge. When I worked with Italians they did not like -20C temps when they visited Michigan. It feels risky to say it but so far it has been a mild winter in SW Michigan with most snowstorms hitting south of us (?!) and daytime temps often around 0C or a bit higher. Local rivers still don't even have ice along the edges although it looks like we may be getting some cold Canadian air soon. I've been breaking in my new Kokatat semi-drysuit, I went with Kokatat largely on your recommendation.

 

[Canotrouge]

Thank you gumpus!! As for kokatat, they are the only way to go in my opinion!!

 

[Odyssey]

My grandma would leave a clumsily wrapped gift for each of my brothers and me under our Christmas tree every year, and never fail they would be what every kid usually abhors for Christmas morning, something entirely practical and never whimsical. It was easy to know which wrinkled parcel was hers; always a prettily chosen bundle wrapped with awkward crinkled care. Every year my Scots granny gifted us scarves and mittens painstakingly home knitted with elderly arthritic hands . My thankful hugs and kisses even at that tender age were always sincere. However uncool her knitted gifts were they always were blissfully welcome. However to add to the otherwise adolescent embarrassment my mother often knitted a balaclava each to complete the wool wrapped child against the Canadian storm. They were scratchy insurance against the winter weather; even now I remember with reverence the sight and smell of snow-clad wool laid against hot furnace stove pipes on February nights after snow play days. It may be just my own precious mismemory but burning wool and rank stank smell signals childhood memories of post- pond hockey games and snow fort fights. I can smell that pungent burnt pong to this day, and it inspires bittersweet childhood feelings. In those days the storms came, usually in January well after the disappointing greenness of another unseasonable Christmas. But when the snow came we made snow forts and snow caves deep into the cosy confines of banked drifts of cold white bliss. Just like the grateful gifts of grandma the annual blessings of winter weather marked the passing of our thankful year. By the time girls entered my bus stop world I morphed from woollen garb to denim bell bottoms and paisley shirts. But thank God and grandma those Christmas gifts kept coming to me despite my growing "grooviness." They were my insurance against the world, weatherise or otherwise.
Wool never left my life thanks to my maternal care, and although the passing of grandmothers and mothers the generational knitted care supports me and mine.
At my side sits a bowl of yarn, my wife has carefully soulfully woven, soon to be knitted into socks, scarves, and mittens, and blissfully welcomed by warmhearted wool hungry simple souled survivors. Thankfully the wool thread continues in my life and goes on. May God Bless Us All .

Now to welcome winter I shovel snow and sprinkle rock salt on these city sidewalks. Such are these my golden days. I am ageing but not yet olden. I still love the stinging taste of fresh falling snow on my tongue. Snow forts and pond hockey are well past me but moonlit nights and frosty days await my future. Season by season, one day at a time. Snow included. May it never end until the end of days. However much, however little, it is the stuff of life.
It makes me feel alive.

 

[PaddlingPitt]

Gosh, Odyssey, a little reminiscent of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe!

 

[Mason]

The Big One hit last night in the Sierra Nevada. The latest prediction is 5-8 feet of snow above 7,000 feet with 100 mile an hour winds on the ridges.
Two to four feet at Lake Tahoe. Blizzard warning for 48 hours with no travel.

Snow total for Mammoth Mountain in last two days is 107 inches, almost 9 feet. More storms lined up next week.
Today I got stuck in my own driveway.

Thursday at Mammoth:
"A 52-year-old man from Oceanside, CA, died Thursday after being discovered upside down and unconscious in deep snow"