Cold
this weekend.
Temperatures
heading into the teens.
That’s
Fahrenheit teens. And actual temperatures, not the feels-like
stuff.
Going
to be three or four days before we reach the hot and humid twenty-degree
mark again. Plus, it’s likely weeks, if not two months or so away
from seeing forty or fifty again.
Weird
part is that for most of November and December, we were treated
to fluctuating temperatures and a fair amount of rain. And that
means even with the bitter chills hitting right now, the ground
isn’t exactly frozen solid just yet. Soft in some spots. And for
those that know, there really isn’t anything like shoveling snow
in the mud. (And yes, that’s a thing.)
Got
in the car today. Felt a bit warmer out than yesterday. Actually,
it was a sweltering eighteen, but no wind and full sunshine tricked
the senses. It was wonderful.
Where
are the points in weather that it really doesn’t matter? In short…
It’s
so cold… so warm… so windy… so rainy… that it just doesn’t matter
at this point if it gets worse.
One
of my pet peeves is the moisture in the air that forces you to
turn on the windshield wipers, but only for one or two passes
every 90-seconds or so. There is no need to keep them on. If you
do leave them on, the only result is that annoying rubbing sound
that usually nudges you to turn them off. There is no intermittent
setting slow enough to allow you to leave them on without annoying
you. But there is just enough mist flying around in the air—it’s
mist, not even close to being classified as rain—that you’ll need
to be aware of it and ready to flip the wipers back into action.
Rain
or don’t rain. Make up your mind. Doesn’t matter to me. I just
want to stop turning the wipers off and on.
Apply
that idea to the hot and humid experience of a classic summer
August day, or the biting and mind-numbing thrill of a winter
day in February.
When
is it so hot that it just really doesn’t matter if we get any
hotter? I’m already in shorts, begging for air conditioning, given
up on any and all outside activity, and cursing the decision not
to build a pool in the yard. Does another degree or two really
matter that much?
People
joke about places where they say it’s a dry heat. Because, of
course, cracking the century mark to a point where an egg would
fry on the sidewalk while shrubs are spontaneously bursting into
flames is more tolerable with a low humidity.
Incredibly,
there might be something to the dry heat comment. Situations shifting
that is.
Set
the day around fifty degrees and sunny. If it had been well below
freezing for weeks, such a day would be brilliant. Coming out
of the summer, you might not be able to layer enough clothes to
stay warm. Add in a breeze… make it first thing in the morning…
adjust you from sitting in the shade to moving around doing work…
and that same fifty and sunny jumps around from warm to cold to
you not even noticing the weather because it’s more or less just
fine.
That
joke about shoveling mud? Ok… try to imagine this. Part of your
driveway is dirt. Might be the edge, around where driveway meets
lawn. Out you go with the snow blower, and it’s not quite freezing…
so that heavy, wet snow. And the tires begin sinking along the
edges because the ground is wet and no frozen solid. Plus, the
real beauty is, after leaving tire tracks, maybe it does get colder
so the tracks freeze into place. Then, it snows again, and you
have an uneven surface to clear off. That’s
wonderful.
It’s
cold this weekend. I won’t be shoveling mud. It’s cold enough
that it just doesn’t matter.