And so we head back into winter, or winter heads back into us. Yesterday, temperatures hit the forty-five degree mark, the streets ran with water, and the whole landscape appeared to be in meltdown. Yet today, as the snow flies outside, the notion that storm chasing season lies just around the corner seems almost absurd. Nothing outside my window offers so much as a hint of spring weather on the way. The borders of the parking lot at my apartment are demarcated with tall piles of snow, and I”m sure that by tomorrow morning, the plow will have plenty more material to work with.
This afternoon, after a sushi lunch at the Tokyo Grill, I saw my close friend Kimberly off at the airport. She came out for an all-too-brief but very nice visit for my birthday, which is today. We had a great time, which included dinner yesterday with my mother and sister; and on the day before, Saturday, a drive along the Lake Michigan coastline. The ice formations are spectacular this year, and Kimberly, who lives in California, had never seen them. They were quite beautiful, with thin clouds of wind-driven snow spray dusting across them, driven by a chill west wind and lit by the evening sun.
As I write, Kimber is homeward bound, and I can hear the wind whooshing through the trees outside (my gosh, is it really blowing steadily at twenty-four miles an hour?), sounding every bit as cold as the eighteen degrees that the airport METAR indicates.
Yet the sun rose at 7:36 this morning and set at 6:15 here in Caledonia, Michigan. And my online sunrise-sunset calendar shows that between today and the end of this leap-year February, we will gain another thirty-one minutes. I like that thought. Winter really isn”t here to stay. It may seem like that”s the case right now, but in just a matter of weeks, those springtime lows will come swinging like giant wrecking balls out of the Pacific Northwest down into the plains, deepening as they travel, sucking in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and making life a lot more interesting for storm chasers.
I”m particularly excited about one of the tools I”ll have in my chase kit this spring. For quite a while now, Andrew Revering has been hard at work on a major upgrade of his fabulous F5 Data forecasting software. Besides an extensive graphical overhaul, the new version will include the addition of GFS to the suite of forecast models. I used F5 Data quite heavily last year and loved it. The upgrade is due to be released any day, now, and I”ve been looking forward to it with the eagerness of a kid on…well, on his birthday. With two chases already under my belt between January 7 and February 5, I anticipate that my F5 subscription will get a lot of use this year.
So let the snows fly. Not long from now, those wintry blasts will weaken into emphysemic frailty, and gasp their last as the Gulf of Mexico reopens for business. I”m ready. Can you tell?
