Is it just me getting old, or have we spent way too much time this January with temperatures in the teens, single digits, or below? Hopefully this link is permanent; it’s January 2009 historical weather data from Weather Underground. The low has been below 20 degrees on 21 days this month, most of the packed into the second half.
Grumble grumble.
Aside from the couple of days without power, I kind of prefer this to the typical 40 degrees and raining every other day that we had been having the last few years, or the winter tornadoes.
When the most recent snowstorm came to Fort Wayne, I was thankful for snow rather than another ice storm.
And um, well yes: temperature-centricity does come with age, old chap.
Just hang in there. St. Al of Gore promises years of “balmy” weather ahead. That is, until nature upsets the old academic applecart again.
At least it has been sunny more often than not up here; although we have received more precipitation/snow than usual.
We missed that last big one that hit the southern part of the state-and Chicago was so Blago-centric, I didn’t even know that the rest of the state was in such turmoil until a day and a half after the storm hit.
This almost has seemed like Winter to me, although without the big snowstorm, we would have been way under average for January snowfall. One day, and BOOM.
Then again, I grew up in Cleveland during the 70s, when Winters were rougher and there was talk of a new Ice Age coming. I remember the Winter of ’78, when the snow covered the ground continuously from Thanksgiving to Easter, and the snow piles remained in parking lots until the first week of June.
Indianapolis Winters make me feel like I like in the South.
For Louisville, between the remnants of Hurricane Ike in September and the ice storm last week, it seems like our patience has been tested big time! Finally got power back on at my house this evening about 5:30 (about 5 1/2 days) and was without power last September for about a week, almost to the hour. The challenging part this time around was dealing with 1099’s and W-2’s (both of which were due today). We lost power at our office also from Wednesday morning until Friday evening, fortunately we had the weekend to get everything done. There were utility crews here in Louisville from Indy, Atlanta, and other places to help LG&E get power restored. At this hour there are about 49,000 LG&E customers still without power. One of the things that hits home with me is how dependent we are on electricity. Governor Beshear has requested, and received a declaration from President Obama to have Kentucky declared a federal disaster area.
In ’97 or ’98, I helped a committee that was considering electricity deregulation for Indiana along the lines of what California adopted. That was when I really became sensitized to just how much of our lives comes out of an electrical socket. (Thankfully the General Assembly declined the proposals of the Enron lobbyist, among others, to abandon our relatively cheap energy for something on the California model.)
I like Rachel Maddow’s(MSNBC) take on our electrical grid.She said something like:If we are concerned about anti- terrorism,but we become so incapacitated by a January ice storm,what does that tell us about our rhetoric and our priorities? ……
Deregulation has recently meant kick out consumer protection so ‘private enterprise’ can come in and regulate with no accountability.
This practice has bastardized the concept of ‘Free Market’
We’re supposed to get upwards of a foot of lake effect snow today; and then warm up near the 50’s by the weekend.
Can anyone say flood?
BAM-that’s the part of Ike we got…floods.