Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Friday, January 02, 2004

Winter

In an ambulance chasing sort of way, weather interests me. I love it when severe weather happens, though I don't like the idea of actual real destruction and death. I love the impending crisis of it all, the preparation and the wait for the event to get here. Winter, in many ways in the best for this. You know that the weather will be bad, sooner or later. One question is when and how bad. Another is what kind of bad. Will it snow? Will there be freezing rain? Will major transportation and government facilities be shut down? Usually, it's slow moving and not all that deadly except to those who don't respect it.

The first winter we arrived in Kansas we encountered a cold snap in January that took temperatures to -60 F with the wind chill. It was the coldest I'd ever been. School was cancelled and everything shut down. No one knew how long the wind would last. The wind only lasted a day but we didn't see temps above 0 F for a week and temps above freezing for two. The excitement wore off pretty quickly. Our first winter here in Georgia was the incredible ice storm. It didn't do us much harm but it was stunningly beautiful and deadly at the same time. When the tree limbs started snapping with sounds like rifle shots we knew it was going to be interesting. The roads stayed clear so we got to drive around and enjoy the ice palace world until the power lines came down. A town north of us lost power for a week. We were lucky as we only lost power for about four hours. The next year is was four inches of snow, which was no big deal for us but the locals sure were shocked to see it. After that it was cold and last year it was lots of rain.

So, I wonder what it will be this year? To me that's part of the interest. Look at what's going on out West. See what's developing. See if anything will make it here and how bad it will be. I enjoy that a lot. I used to enjoy it with hurricanes too until Andrew and then I got to see the devastation that caused. Now I'm apprehensive about hurricanes, not excited. Something will hapen in January, I'd almost bet on it. February and March will have wind and rain and ugly storms with tornadoes and thunderstorms but January will have real winter weather. Me? I'm the winter weather rubbernecker.

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