Whoo-WEEE, is it cold outside! Nine degrees, the KGRR METAR says, but I think the gents at our local WFO are being optimistic. It”s cold enough to make a snowman ask for a down jacket. Cold enough to crystallize a penguin”s nuts. (Did I just say that?) Cold enough to make a summer home in Antarctica sound good. Cold enough to…okay, okay, I”ll stop. Put down that gun. But we are talking one significantly frosty day here in beautiful Caledonia, Michigan, folks, a real booger-freezer if ever there was one.
Tomorrow the temperature is progged to rocket back up to a balmy ten degrees. That”s an improvement, though not one that inclines me to slip on a T-shirt. Saturday, however, the warming trend kicks in full force, and we”ll all be sweating to a downright tropical nineteen degrees. So you can see that there”s light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m going out with my camera in a bit to capture some shots for Dave VanderVeen”s WaterlandLiving blog. I”m not sure what there is to see in weather like this, or how brave I feel about venturing very far out in it. I do have one, um, cool idea, though, so I guess we’ll see. It may get scuttled by lake effect snow. We”re supposed to get a ton of that. But right now the sun is shining. That”s today for you: sunshine, snow, sunshine, snow, back and forth, sloshing around in an atmosphere that feels like the last Fahrenheit has been sucked right out of it. And now, as I look out the window, I see that the wind is starting to kick in. How much more interesting can things get?
What”s particularly ironic is, I”m currently working through Chase Case #8 on Stormtrack, and while all of the other participants are playing to the south on this particular virtual synoptic setup, I”m sitting right here in Caledonia under a moderate risk, waiting for either a model update or for tornadic thunderstorms to fire. Sixties dewpoints, temps in the seventies, nice backing winds…mmmm-hmmm, right. If there”s a solitary dewpoint out there right now, it”s freezing its little buns off.
But I can dream. In fact, right about now, that”s my only option as a storm chaser.
Just wait till May, though. Just wait till May.
