It was -36° when I got up this morning, wind chill -47°. Those numbers are on the Celsius scale, but the Fahrenheit numbers don't look any better: -33° and -52° wind chill. This is the depth of winter, the whole week is supposed to be like this. There can be advantages to days like this. … Continue reading Winter grumbles
climate change
Will the Paris climate conference save us from the dastardly Chinook wind?
Leonardo DiCaprio was filming in Calgary in January of this year when a Chinook wind came up. It terrified him. “We would come and there would be eight feet of snow, and then all of a sudden a warm gust of wind would come.” “…it was scary. I’ve never experienced something so firsthand that was … Continue reading Will the Paris climate conference save us from the dastardly Chinook wind?
The first day of winter
Today is the winter solstice, the day when winter officially begins. In real life, we've had a month of winter here already, with far too many days when the temperature went down to -30° Celsius at night and only went up by 5 or 10 degrees in the daytime. Our two youngest cats insist on … Continue reading The first day of winter
The pride of man
When I was a teenager, scientists were predicting that a new ice age was somewhere just over the horizon. Around the same time (these were the cold war days) the media was publishing speculations that severe weather conditions were the result of secret Russian experiments at weather control. The U.S. military was spending a lot … Continue reading The pride of man
Is God Laughing?
On the strength of 71 years of experience, I have concluded that there is no such thing as normal weather. The figures we are given as “normals for the period” are just averages of many years of abnormal weather. There was the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago when Lief Erickson and his men landed … Continue reading Is God Laughing?
Flatlander Faith 