Category Archives: Weather

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.

Ten Times Around for Ann

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This morning I looked out and saw puddles of water. I was expecting ice. I didn’t bother checking any weather reports last night, so I was surprised. Actually, I’m still surprised, since this afternoon it felt like a post-rain day in March — not warm, but not freezing cold either, and a lot of soggy ground.

Ann’s 10th birthday is later this week, but she elected to mark the occasion on Saturday with some friends, cake and ceremonial candle extinguishing. Some of Lilly’s friends were around too, mostly to eat some food.

Have the last ten years passed quickly? Like the wink of an eye, or another cliche of choice? No, not really. It seems like quite a while ago, because it was. Ten years ago: “I got back to the hospital at about 7:30 am, and things were moving along nicely, but I hadn’t missed the main event. Before long, though, the show was on. At about t-minus 10 minutes (in retrospect, I can call it that) the doctor asked me if we knew it was a boy or girl. I said no. Do you have any names? Yes, Ann and Alexander. Duly noted. And so the baby came — hard to find a verb here that really describes it — pushed out, squeezed forth, slipped through bloodily, noisily, suddenly. ‘It’s baby Ann,’ said the doc, which was a nice thing for her to do. When Lilly was born, there was much hubbub, the view was obscured, and no one mentioned gender until I asked.”

Honour’d and Blest be the Evergreen Pine

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Bitter cold this morning. At about 6 a.m. both Yuriko and I heard a loud pop from the direction of the back yard. I thought it was something hitting the something else nearby, she thought it was an “explosion.” She was right. The night before I’d neglected to take in some of the soda cans that had been chilling on the deck, and one of them exploded. Even now bits of frozen soda linger on the planks.

As usual, the Atlantic has gathered together a remarkable set of photographs about a theme – in this case, the inauguration yesterday. I was surprised by how fast it was up, since I first looked at them at about 8 p.m. last night (some have been added since then). That’s a lot of pictures to upload and, especially, caption.

I was glad to see Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter looking (pic 22) so remarkably hale. The Clintons were also there, as to be expected, and I can understand why the ailing George HW Bush wasn’t in attendance. What’s up with his son, who also wasn’t there? We can give him the benefit of the doubt and say he wanted to be with his father. Or maybe he figured, eh, been to too many already, which would probably include his father becoming vice president and president, his own inaugurations, and the 2009 inauguration.

Just before 11 a.m. yesterday, I made sure both of the girls were with me to watch a bit of the event, even though it was really just for show, the actual swearing in having occurred in the Blue Room of the White House the day before. Just for show, but important. It’s churlish to begrudge any president the rituals of inauguration, whatever you think of his politics. A highly visible and ritualized transition, even if it’s a second-term transition, helps maintain the stability of the government. President Adams might have been peevish in not attending Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration, but at least he didn’t try to stop it.

Fibber McGee’s Garage

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Winter warm through most of Friday and Saturday – in the 50s at times – and then freezing rain came on Saturday night, followed by normal January temps again plus ice. Not major ice, just enough to leave thin sheets underfoot here and there, which I coated with sand. Why isn’t sand more popular for dealing with icy patches? It doesn’t melt the ice, but it neutralizes the slip danger, which is what matters.

But I couldn’t deal with the ice sheet on the Sienna with sand. Lilly wanted to practice some driving on Sunday, so I made her chip parts of the ice off the windows with me. If you’re going to have a car in the North, and a two-car garage organized by Fibber McGee so that only one car goes in there, you’ll have to de-ice your car windows sometimes.

I wonder how long Fibber McGee’s closet will be a widely understood reference. Or has it already passed into obscurity, and I didn’t get the memo? It’s easy to ignore that kind of change. I do it all the time. Then again, you can’t ever know what’s going to die out in the age of YouTube. (This is cheating, since it isn’t the radio show, but it’s still worth a link.)