hot n cold

Climate shock.

When we left Honolulu yesterday,

 Hawaii was, well, Hawaii.

Beautiful, benign and balmy.

By the time the plane landed,

 Denver was buried by the biggest February snow in history.

First you play, and then you pay.

Mother Nature is a twisted sister.

blizzard antidote

It's snowing at a rate of 2 inches an hour and blowing so hard, I can't see the fence 75 feet away. As of yesterday, we hadn't had a drop of anything in over 6 weeks. Nothing but winds over 70 mph and spot wildfires. Ah, yes... Springtime in the Rockies. So Mother Nature is celebrating with her typical attack of whimsy, blessing us with more than a foot of snow. It could be worse; this could be Fargo, where the Red River is flooding at historic proportions and it's blizzarding.

Happily, I don't have to go anywhere today except my studio, which is buried somewhere out there in the whiteout. However, to get out there I have to shovel-grunt-push a path in the snow. Maybe watching me struggle into my down jacket, boots, hat, scarf and mittens will amuse the dog enough to get him out of his bed and into the storm. By then, the snow will be deeper than his legs are long; no doubt he'll need a snorkle and doggles.

To soothe the shivering, chapping and cussing, I've posted this picture of another world where storms are beautiful in a very, very different way. It helps just knowing it's out there somewhere.

this is global warming?

No. Global warming has become an archaic term. To be more precise (until we find out how much trouble we're really in and have to come up with an even more cataclysmic descriptor), I think "climate change" is just about the level of understatement we humans can take about now. As the sweat broke out from under the pancake (Bronze #5) on the brow of the guy on the Weather Channel, he begged, "Is there ANYwhere in the US that isn't under attack by Mother Nature this weekend?".

First answer: no. Second answer: Mother Nature knows she doesn't have to do anything but watch, let alone attack. Third answer: we're cycling, folks. That's a good thing. Really. It gets bad when there's stasis, when it's silent and nothing moves. Now, THAT'S dangerous. In other words, when She holds her breath...

There, there... Did that help? Me neither. Moving right along...

I grew up in Maine. Up there in the tiptop righthand corner of the US of A. The other Maritime Province. Where winter goes on and on like that damn battery bunny. So you might assume an icestorm of historic proportions wouldn't phase me. Wrong. They're comparing this storm to the wicked one of 1998. That one also took out a lot of eastern Canada. Of course, odds are there have been at least another few dozen back before anyone was likely to survive to tell about it. However, this time's different. This time my elderly parents, in their home on the coast, along with another quarter of a million people, are without power. And that's just in Maine. Icy damage has blacked out most of New England and upstate New York. It'll take days, if not weeks, to get everyone's power restored. Which only begins to say how much those two gloriously perfect weeks in August are worth...

Last I heard this morning, when I got through to my sister who lives on an island nearby, my parents had gone to the Downeaster Motel for b'fast and hopefully a room. I'm waiting to hear anything else. I get it; blogging is for when you're helpless to do anything else. I think I'll go soak my head in the shower while I wait.

That's all it took; the phone just rang. The juice is back on. My parents are fine. Flushed by the excitement of survival, having tea in my sister's kitchen, and booked into the Downeaster for the duration. Exhale.