Category Archives: Weather

All the Boards Did Shrink Again

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It rained from about midnight to 6 a.m. on Thursday, one of the heaviest I’ve seen here in the northwest suburbs, but not the heaviest. Just my impression. I don’t feel like looking up the rainfall totals measured at O’Hare for then and now.

Thursday’s rain also compares to the time we went camping in Wisconsin, in summer of ’07, and during our last night in the tent it rained and rained and rained (which I called “two-fisted, he-man rain”). As for the tent, guaranteed to keep you dry indeed.

On Friday morning, skies were gray, but at least it wasn’t raining any more. On Saturday morning, the morning greeted us with a light dusting of snow. It melted after a short time, but even this far north, that’s a little unusual.

Much mud is still around. The dog is very fond of it.

The Soggy Green Grass of April

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Rain, rain, rain. Seems like the drought that gripped northern Illinois is over. And it seems like we’re getting the rain we didn’t get last year, plus this year’s, and maybe a down payment on next year’s. But I suppose that’s anthropomorphism, or at least using financial terminology for the weather.

Speaking of anthropomorphism, I think that when our new hound watches us prepare food, as she does every day, she must be thinking those humans are crazy. Why aren’t they eating their food right now?

Another dog picture. I’ll probably publish a number of them before the novelty wears off. I tried to get her to look at the camera, but she was too busy spying our back yard tree for squirrels. None were to be seen. That time.

Hints of Spring

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Despite the nearness of the equinox — which will inevitably be called ‘the first day of spring” when it arrives — winter grinds on here. Can’t call it spring. Large snowflakes came down much of this morning, though it wasn’t quite cold enough for them to last. Subfreezing temps expected at night for days and days to come.

The latest gas bill arrived the other day to drive home the fact that we’re still warming the house using natural gas. For the period February 12 through March 14 (30 days), 245.38 therms went for that purpose (including a few for cooking), or roughly 24.5M Btus. The bill also tells me that the average temp was 33 degrees F. for the period in question, compared with 54 degrees for roughly the same period last year. Natural gas prices are up, too, at least as reflected in the statement. Not sure what to make of that; last I heard, there was a glut.

I did see the tips of a few croci today, though not in my yard. And not long ago I heard a woodpecker, pecking at a tree in search of a meal. Only hints of spring, but better than nothing.

Come May, We’ll be in Clover

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Winter refuses to go quietly. Today was windy and raw, and just before dark, snowy. Not a vast amount, just enough to re-whiten the ground. But even so, winter is losing its grip. Before the snow started, I walked by a front yard that had the remains of a snowman: a lump of unmelted snow, a hat on top of that, and a carrot and some apples on the ground nearby. (Ann told me the apples were the snowman’s “buttons.”)

Got a note from a friendly yard-care company rubber-banded to my front doorknob the other day, offering its services in the spring. The note featured a checklist of “undesired weeds” in our yard, and according to the checklist we have chickweed, henbit, dandelions, and clover. How did this company know what I have in my yard? Yard spies wandering down the sidewalks last summer, making notes? It’s too soon yet for drones to do that, but someday no doubt they will.

Never mind. Those last two are easy enough, but I had to look up the others. Chickweed refers to a lot of different plants, so it’s one of those unhelpful common names that spurred Carolus Linnaeus to do what he did. Henbit is Lamium amplexicaule. I’m pretty sure we do in fact have henbit, dandelions, and clover in the yard. But they missed our pockets of mint, maybe because most of those are in the back yard, and yard spies who go there are trespassing.

But why are those three weeds? I’ve written about dandelions. As for clover, it’s clover. We’re not talking kudzu here. Clover is good. The expression “in clover,” though a bit old-fashioned, reflects that.  The OED puts it this way: “to live (or be) in clover: ‘to live luxuriously; clover being extremely delicious and fattening to cattle.’ ” We don’t have cattle, but who can look down on those little green plants mixed in with other grasses, with their three leaves and hardy constitutions, and think weed?

Letter from the Alamo

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Remember the Alamo. This year the Feb. 24, 1836, letter by William Barret Travis — the famed Victory or Death letter — has been on display at the Alamo since Feb. 23 (and continuing until tomorrow), on loan from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. The Alamo has even set up a web site for the letter, which is here, though I don’t know how long it will be up. Apparently the letter hasn’t been to the Alamo since Travis sent it.

I might have braved the lines to take a look at it, but I’ve been further north, putting up with late winter. Yesterday, of course, was a big snow. What happens after a big snow? Plowing on the street by the village, shoveling on my driveway by me, and occasional snowball fights among the girls. Once paths have been cleared, everyone’s schedule returns to normal, as they did today.

Being a March snow, I’m expecting meltage soon. The only unusual thing about the weather this year was the paucity of snow in early winter, compared to its abundance later on.

The Big March Snow

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Snow! Not much more to report on this March 5. Both elementary and high schools were closed, even though the snowfall really didn’t get under way until late in the morning, and Yuriko stayed home too. When the snow started to fall, it came with gusto. But not much wind. Just steady snow, hour after hour.

I didn’t get around to shoveling until about 8:30. After dark, but with light bouncing off the snow, it wasn’t that dark. There must be two feet on the ground now, counting this snow and the previous buildups.

March snows aren’t that strange, but ones so vigorous are a little uncommon. The last time I remember so much coming down this month was in early March 1998. We had so much that we postponed out meeting with the home inspector at the house we would eventually buy in Westmont that year.

The Bleak Mid-February

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Yesterday was almost warm, but winds and a dusting of snow blew through overnight and brought back standard February bleak.

The only colorful back-yard bits are man-made: plastic planters kicking around, empty of plants and void of use. For now. It’s a little hard to believe, but in four months or so, the back yard will look like this.

Give Me That Old-Time Papacy

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Miserable cold, windy day, the kind of day that has you chase your trash cans down the street early in the morning, after crossing parts of your driveway that threaten to slip you up. While groggy, because recent days have been such an intense combination of rain, snow, and meltage that your trusty sump pump works very hard to remove water from the lower reaches of your house — and decides to noisily kick in just after midnight. Keeping you (me) awake long past the point at which you (I) wanted to be awake.

But at least I heard about an historic event today, something that hasn’t happened in almost 600 years; rarer than a Transit of Venus, though the resignation of a pope could be more common if the popes wanted it to be. Naturally, that sent me to reference works to look up the likes of Gregory XII, the last pontiff to voluntarily kick off the shoes of the fisherman. That was during the Great Schism, something you don’t hear much about in the news (it’s old news, after all).

The fine Historical Atlas of the World (Barnes & Noble Everyday Handbooks, 1970) has a map called the Great Schism 1378-1417 on half a page, and it’s instructive in the way maps can be. Some areas are purple: “Adherents to the pope in Rome,” such as England, all the Scandinavian kingdoms, Hungary, Poland, and the Italian states. In green, “Adherents of the pope in Avignon,” including Castile, Aragon, France, Scotland, and the Kingdom of Naples. The sprawling, non-centralized Holy Roman Empire is in gold, listed as a region of “Undecided Allegiance.” No surprise there, but Portugal is also undecided. I don’t remember the reason for that, but maybe they were trying to annoy their fellow Iberians in Castile and Aragon.

So who’s to be the next pope? Does Benedict XVI want to be alive to influence the choice? Perhaps to push for a “nephew” for the job? No, papal intrigue isn’t quite what it used to be. What about the next papal name? I still think Sixtus the Sixth would be a good choice.

The No Name Storm

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Heavy snow this evening, but it didn’t rise to the level of blizzard. For one thing, there was practically no wind. First rain, than big snow flakes fell almost straight down. Nothing like the promised blizzard in the Northeast, which the Weather Channel is trying to name after a fictional submarine captain or a spunky animated clown fish.

Name winter storms? No, if it’s a real corker, the likes of the “Great Blizzard of 1888” or the “Armistice Day Blizzard,” or the “Blizzard of 1978” will do. Trying to name a winter storm like a hurricane is just the Weather Channel drifting a little more toward infotainment. I’m with the National Weather Service on that score: no names for winter storms.

And speaking of which: no to the new cat Monopoly token. There’s a dog token, of course, but dogs are loyal creatures who will follow you around the board. Cats will lounge around Free Parking all day, waiting to be fed. I’m old enough to remember to man-on-horseback and cannon tokens, which shouldn’t have been retired either. When it comes to weather nomenclature and Monopoly, I’m a mossbacked reactionary.

Light Snow, But It Added Up

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At last, snow worthy of the name. Or at least in the North. I’ve seen enough Northern winters (or, enough already), so I think I can call this one the first real snow of the winter — looks like an early December snow. Odd.

The deck, early February 2013.

The snowfall also meant the first snow shoveling of the season, hearing the rumble of trucks and their flashing lights entering your room in the middle of the night, and the buzz of snowblowers. I still do the snow manually.