Oops.

Okay, spring may be nigh, but it got pretty dang cold last night. 2˚F when I took this screen shot.

Spring is nigh

Some miscellaneous winter scenes that I haven't gotten around to posting.

First, from when it was still cold. (When it was this cold, -20˚F or colder, my grandfather used to say, in Finnish, a word that he claimed translated to "piss freezes in an arc.") I liked the way the wind had sculpted the snow into something that reminded me of a lunar landscape in miniature.





We had an ice storm a few weeks back, encasing everything in ice anywhere from 1/8" to 1/4" thick. It really did a number on some of the trees around here, including the birch tree in our front yard. Any guesses regarding the type of tree to which the branches in the foreground are attached?




Then, as it warmed up and the sunlight got stronger, we started getting some good crops of icicles.




Here, someone must have collected them and jammed them into a snowbank.




One evening last weekend, after a few days in the 30s and 40s, it began to rain. During the night, temperatures dropped and the rain turned to snow. The next day, the bark park was an odd combination of fresh, fluffy snow, large expanses of sheer ice and puddles. In the photo below I'm standing in about 4" of ice water. Thank the gods for dorky-looking, inexpensive, water-proof rubber boots. Made in China, unfortunately.




During the recent thaw, our street turned into a lake. Some of the local waterfowl took advantage of the conditions. (photos and concept: Luminiferous Ether)

The Thaw

We've had a record-breaking amount of snow this year (global warming, global shwarming!). I think the previous record was set in 1979. Temperatures in the 30s and 40s for a few days. As a result, we have some serious thawing happening. Last Friday, our street, which had become a nearly impassable mass of rutted ice, had turned into a lake. I had intended to get a picture of it but, since it had remained submerged throughout the day, there was no sense of urgency. In fact, I thought that it would continue to get larger as more melting occurred. After returning from picking up my daughter at school I discovered that almost all the water had disappeared (see below).



It couldn't possibly have all evaporated and the gutters and storm sewers were still blocked with ice. Where had all that water gone? Curiosity got the better of me and I eventually found a spot downstream that was bubbling like a mudspring. Bloop. Bloop. Weird. I went to get the camera and when I returned the bloopling had turned into a little whirlpool. As it turned out, there was a manhole cover that must have been ice-covered and was no longer. All the water was rushing down that little hole in the center.



I suppose it doesn't sound all that strange, but I thought it was interesting. One of the things I enjoy about winter is the strange landscapes it creates, both in the midst of all the snowfall and during the thawing stage. These next photos are of the little canyon on our street that was formed after one of my neighbors went and hacked all the ice out of the storm drain. If you give your imagination a bit of leeway, they almost look like aerial views of a real watercourse.

Snow Day!

We're in the midst of a great winter storm. Schools are closed, government offices are closed, the buses are stopped - even the malls are closed! I took the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood and enjoy the snow. You can click on any of the following photos if you wish to enbiggen them. I used a real camera instead of my camera phone, so they actually look pretty clear when they're enbiggenned.




The plow hit our street once today, but we've gotten so much since then that the street is pretty much unnavigable right now. The plow got stuck on one of our neighboring streets, so it left a big pile of snow in the middle of the street and drove off. I dread shoveling the car out after they plow again.




I love the way, when we get enough snow to shut everything down, everyone in the neighborhood is home and it's sort of like a big party; everyone is out shoveling (except me - more on that in a moment), chatting, walking around - it's really quite wonderful.



Here is our neighbor Kenny:




Kenny, who does not have kids of his own, seems rather aloof and one could easily interpret this as unfriendliness, although I think he's just shy, but he spends a lot of time with these two kids who wouldn't move to allow him to shovel out his driveway, so he shoveled around them.




Next-door neighbors Terri and Cricket. You decided who is whom. Terri and her wife Rachel are two of the best neighbors one could ask for.




Ms. Geranium (aka Luminiferous Ether) and Rona (next-door neighbor on our other side) out shoveling. Rona just got back from Hawaii yesterday, which was fortunate for us, since we were the designated shovelers while she was gone. Rather an extreme switch from 70˚ in Hawaii to Wisconsin winter.




Rona and another neighbor, Alicia, chatting about Hawaii in the snow.





And, of course, we have the lovely and talented, aforementioned and aforepictured Ms. Geranium. I injured my back a little over two weeks ago and it's still giving me a pain in the, well, back, so I can't really shovel. Ms. Geranium did all our shoveling today. What a gal! Don't you just love those leopard spots, too? Roowwrr!





Our recently adopted dog, Molly, who doesn't mind snow as long as it's not falling out of the sky.




While walking around the neighborhood, I saw through the bushes what looked like a pickup truck buried in snow.




I decided to check it out from the other side of the bushes. It clearly hadn't moved for quite some time and the person who plows the parking lot in which it is parked had plowed all the snow from the lot over the truck. The front end is completely buried.




In this next one, I climbed on top of the mound to get a look. Once on top, I sank up to my crotch in the snow, so I took this shot and went back down rather than go any further.




This neighbor's sports-car is going nowhere fast .




Some other scenes from around the neighborhood:




















Molly needs a lot of excercise, so I take her to the bark park pretty much every day. Since I really enjoy driving in snow, I thought we would go today. I decided I would take a drive around the neighborhood to see how the roads were prior to venturing very far from home. I concluded that it wasn't a good idea. Here's the car before I cleared it off to drive around. The snow makes it look like a mini-van, but it's not.




Back inside, a view out the front window.

Weird weather

Earlier today, it was raining and 43˚. I was wearing a windbreaker over a sweatshirt outside. Now it's -2˚ and windy. The rain we had earlier turned to sleet, then snow that looked and felt like white Dippin' Dots™, then plain old snow. It's predicted that it will get down to -12˚ tonight. That's a swing of 55˚ in about 12 hours. Weird.

Glorious Winter!

Sorry if I'm sounding like a broken record, but it's cold! And I like it! The snow sounds different when you walk on it. It isn't squeaking yet, but it has a cold and crunchy feeling to it. The air is brisk and invigorating. Nothing makes one feel more alive than being outside and properly dressed in real cold weather. We haven't had any extreme sub-zero temperatures yet this winter (I think we've only dipped into the minuses a couple of times), but I'm looking forward to it.

It wasn't that cold out when I took these pictures a couple of days ago, but we did have fresh snow, which always begs to have photos taken. Unfortunately, the batteries on the camera died before I could get very artsy. Oh, well.

Goodbye snow

The last five days or so we've had temperatures above freezing and a fair amount of rain, to boot, so all our wonderful snow is melting away faster than you can say ... something. On Monday I went to the bark park and the warm, humid air in contact with the still frozen snow created fog as thick as, umm ... very thick fog. Although it saddened me to see the snow disappearing, I've always enjoyed fog, so I used the crummy camera in my mobile telephone (not too long ago, having a telephone and camera combined in one device that fit in your pocket would have seemed impossible, and here I'm griping that it doesn't take good enough photos!) to take some grainy photographs of the soggy, foggy scenery.






Look, you can see the sun in this one!

On hiatus

I will be out of commission for the next couple of days. The Motor Primitives will be recording what we hope will be our next CD. We feel we need something that represents our current line-up as well as our new material. Rather than going in to a studio to record, we are bringing someone in to record us in our rehearsal space. It's something of an experiment dictated in part by our budget, but also an attempt to make it as comfortable as possible, hoping that a familiar environment will result in a more relaxed performance. We'll see how it turns out. In the mean time, the forecast calls for warm weather with a possibility of rain. We'll probably be losing much of our glorious snow over the next few days. Bummer.

Winters of Yore

As you may have guessed from posts past, I love winter. I love snow, cold weather, everything. I love walking in it. I enjoy driving in it, ice skating and sledding. It has been a long time since we've had what I call a good winter. So far, this winter has been pretty good; as of early January, we've had more snow than has been the case for a number of years and, even though we've lost some of it to warm weather and rain, we still have a fair amount left. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to get a little skiing in this year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Here are a few photos from around the neighborhood.


A neighborhood street:




Railroad bridge:



The Yahara River, not far from our house, looking upstream:




The Yahara River, looking downstream:




John Greenler, a friend of mine, posted another photo of the Yahara River, maybe twenty miles downstream from where these were taken. He's a better photographer than I am.

Dang, it's cold!

I just got back from walking the dogs and my fingers are . . . wait a minute! Do I have fingers? Where are they? Uff da! It feels great, though. I loooove cold weather!