Round Robin: About the Monsoon!

When I posted the topic for the current Round Robin Challenge: About the Weather, my part of Tucson had just had its first big monsoon storm of 2014 on Sunday, July 13th. How big? Take a look:

 

The Arizona monsoon is a seasonal weather pattern that starts in mid-June and runs through September. It accounts for the vast majority of our 11" of average annual rainfall. The monsoon used to be calculated as starting on the date certain conditions were met, based on dew point and other stuff I don't understand. Nowadays it has an official start and end date, but this year the actual weather conditions arrived July 3rd, which is about average.  With climate change and all that, we've been in drought more years than not in the last decade or two, with monsoons that fizzled out without dumping all that much rain in the city itself.

But the storm that Sunday was a good one. Here is the view through my windshield as I sat in the parking lot outside my dad's place.

When I reached the street, I found some rather interesting debris.

I drove from my Dad's to Pantano River Park, to see how much water was in the river. Most of the time there is none. On that late afternoon, there was the most I'd seen in several years.

There is a wash (a usually-dry creek bed) in my neighborhood called Alamo Wash. I've photographed it a lot over the years. Here is my attempt to paste together two photos so you can see the whole scene that afternoon.

Tucson has something called a Stupid Motorist Law, designed to discourage people from driving through washes when they're full of swiftly-running water a foot or more deep. That is quite enough to get a car and its driver in deep trouble. People have actually died! So if someone is stupid enough to drive through a flooded wash and then need rescuring, the city charges them for the service. On that Sunday afternoon in the Terra Del Sol Neighborhood, no one was taking that chance, at least not where the wash crossed Betergeuse behind the high school. The cars you see above were mostly parked. One of them turned around, and so did I.

 Now, was there another way through, where the water wasn't so deep? How about this way?

No, I wasn't willing to chance it, although I did see a truck do it. Over by Terra Del Sol Park, it was just as bad as over by the high school.

Here, too, it wasn't safe to drive through. As I drove around, I saw a lot of neighbors out and about on foot, enjoying the post-rain 74 degree weather, down from 100+. The fact that power was out in some homes may have had something to do with people being outside.

I went back out to a main road and found another way home that did not involve crossing a wash. Then I took the dogs for a walk. Cayenne, who is afraid of thunder, was not overly concerned as I managed to photograph distant lightning.

Now, other than having to comfort Cayenne, I really enjoy monsoon storms. They're dramatic, they don't last long, and we always need the rain. But as I was driving home the next day, I was reminded that it's not all fun and games. Down on the corner, my neighbors were looking at the tree in their front yard, half-destroyed by a lightning strike. Even at that, they're lucky. At least two neighbors have had major roof damage in past years when a tree fell on their houses.

Karen

Be sure to check out all the Round Robin entries this week!

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Ellen
Ellen's Phlog
http://ellensphlog.blogspot.com/

Carly - Posted
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Weekend Assignment # 358: We Had Winter!

This Week's Assignment was the obvious one:

Weekend Assignment # 356: Brrr!
In much of the U.S. and Europe, this winter has been an especially cold and snowy one. How cold has it been where you live? Have recent weather conditions led to any unusual situations locally?

Extra Credit: What extra measures have you personally taken, if any, to stay warm? 

Yes, I know I live in Tucson, but we did have a winter. Really! We were in the throes of it when I wrote the questions above. No, we didn't get any snow; in fact it's been unseasonably dry. But it has been cold. How cold? Consider this: the all time record for the lowest temperature for Tucson in February was 17 degrees, set in 1899. In the early hours of February 3rd and again on the 4th, it hit 18 degrees here! I went out and bought myself a winter jacket, which John said I'd never wear. I think I've worn it every day since then. Granted, that's partly because I'm driving to my new job before dawn. But still. Even in metro Syracuse where I grew up, 18 degrees isn't exactly warm. In Tucson, it's darn cold! The first night, I wore that new winter jacket to bed!

How did Tucson handle the cold? Well, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, particularly to me, Southwest Gas had a major outage at the time of the coldest temperatures, and only recently restored gas service to all but about 439 of the 14,600 homes and businesses that were left out in the cold on February 3rd. Southwest Gas blames cold weather, high demand and frozen pipes. Or something.

Twenty minutes ago, the official temperature in Tucson was 34. The high was 65. I guess winter is over here - well, for now at least!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #355: "I'm a Great Fan of Science, You Know"

First let me tackle this week's Weekend Assignment, and then we'll move on to some news.

Weekend Assignment # 355: Science!

In this year's State of the Union address, the President spoke of the need for better education, particularly in math and science, and the desirability of celebrating winners of science fairs - in other words, science geeks. How good were you in science in school?

Extra Credit: Whether or not you were actually good at it in school, how much of a science geek are you now?

The quote in the subject line is from the character Slartibartfast, from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, radio shows, records, tv series, bad movie and officially licensed towel. He got an award from designing the fjords of Norway, so when he was given Africa to design for a replacement Earth, he intended to do it all in fjords again, "because I'd rather be happy than right, any day."

Myself, I'm not even quite sure why Africa can't have a fjord, except that I suspect that glaciers are involved in their making. I'm not very good at science, you see. I struggled in Earth Science in junior high school, got 100 on my Biology final in tenth grade, dropped out of Chemistry after getting a D the first semester, and never took Physics at all, which I regret. I took astronomy and some sort of climatology in college and struggled with those, too.

Nevertheless, I am a great fan of science. I understand that calling something a scientific "theory" does not mean it is something to be sneered at as "only a theory." I know what the scientific method is, and why empirical testing is good and valuable. I sometimes watch science shows, and even occasionally listen to Science Friday on NPR - not that I understand all of it. I have at least a vague idea of the difference between Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. Just don't ask me to explain it.

I think people should learn science, to the very limit of their ability to understand it. I think we probably need more really good science teachers, and more respect for science in general. I regret not taking that twelfth grade physics class, or some sort of physics for English majors course in college.

A number of years ago, an episode of Scientific American Frontiers was all about the human brain, the problem of Alzheimer's, and ways to keep the brain functioning as we age. The most important point I took away from the program, which I'm heard confirmed several times since then, is that if you learn something new and different later in life, it forms new synapses and helps to keep the brain from growing lesions and losing functionality. It can't just be more of the same, though. It needs to be a whole new field of leaning, not just more about accounting, if one is an accountant, or the next crossword puzzle if one likes crossword puzzles. It needs to be more along the lines of an engineer becoming a poet, or a writer taking up painting.

So maybe sometime in the next decade, I'll set my mind to learning physics. Or something.

***


I had a job interview yesterday. It was quite a distance from the house, almost 50 minutes of driving, over the county line. From where I got off the freeway, I could see Picacho Peak, which I generally think of as a quarter to a third of the way to Phoenix!  But it was a pretty and stress-free drive, mostly by freeway, and then up a lonely two lane highway with mountains in the distance all around me. When I got there, the cool factor of the type of business got me all excited and enthusiastic.

And guess what: I got the job! I won't tell you what it is, because it falls in my usual category of jobs for which it's probably best to not blab on the internet everything I know or every opinion I may have, good, bad or indifferent. It's an accounting job, of course, temp to hire, for a company that does something I find rather exciting. Given that, the pay rate and the nice people I met yesterday, it's going to be well worth the long drive each day. Hooray!

The other bit of news is that winter weather is hitting Tucson hard tonight. We won't be getting snow like the rest of the country, probably, but it's windy, and the forecast is for 15 to 20 degrees tonight. The all-time low for February in Tucson is 17 degrees, and that was back in 1899! So you see this is extraordinary. It's also really windy!

I think I'll go put my gloves on now, to wear indoors!

Karen
Image credit: "Goldilocks planet" illustration by Lynette Cook, National Science Foundation.

Round Robin: In Which I Complain About the Weather

A promising cloud build-up on the last day of July.

From Tucson Weather

Well, that was a total bust. When I proposed the Round Robin topic "About the Weather," based on suggestions by Steven of (sometimes) photoblog (now defunct) and Julie of Julie's Web Journal, Tucson had just had a reasonably spectacular thunderstorm as part of our annual Arizona monsoon. Prime time for the monsoon is July and August, so I thought I'd almost certainly be able to photograph some more dramatic weather for you. If it didn't work out, I'd show you the less-dramatic weather we got instead. And if all else failed, I could always go with photos of dramatic weather from past years.

The day after the rain: Alamo Wash on July 31, 2010.

Plan B it is, then. You know how much rain Tucson has had in August? A tenth of an inch. Phooey. Average rainfall here in August is supposed to be 2.3", so we're well behind. Last year's monsoon fizzled in August also, with a total rainfall of 0.33" for the entire month. I wouldn't be at all surprised if our decade or more of drought turned out to be due to climate change. During 2001 to 2009, three years had a total rainfall for the season (mid-June to mid-September) of under three inches each, less than half of the current century-plus average of 6.06".

Clouds over the mountains - and nowhere else.

What typically happens is, we get a nice buildup of clouds in the afternoon, almost all of it over the mountains that surround the city. If the clouds spread to the sky overhead, an actual thunderstorm starts to seem likely. All too often, though, it rains over the mountains and leaves the city gasping for water - or it dissipates entirely, with no rain in the area at all. We're supposed to get about 11 inches of rain a year here in the desert, just over half of it during the monsoon. All too often recently, the monsoon hasn't done its job. Over the past decade, we've only had three years of above-average monsoon rainfall - and two of those were above average by less than three quarters of an inch.

Distant rain.

Back at the beginning of July, when the photo above was taken, I had high hopes for this year's monsoon, and a greater-than usual longing for it. The humidity was building, making 100 degrees feel hotter than 114 degrees had in June. Every day I wondered, "Is it here yet? Is the monsoon coming? When is it going to rain and cool things off?" I kept checking the National Weather Service/NOAA site dedicated to the Arizona monsoon, looking for a notice that "The 2010 monsoon started on July 3, 2010" or somesuch. They used to post this info every year, based on the following calculation:

The monsoon start date is determined when the average daily

dewpoint is 54 degrees or greater for "3" consecutive days.

The start date is the first of the "3" consecutive days.

What I didn't know was that NOAA decided several years ago to stop naming the official start of the monsoon by this definition, probably because it's hard to compare monsoons from year to year without using the same date range for each. Now the monsoon officially starts on June 15th, whether the sky is ready or not. This year it wasn't. We had just under a quarter of an inch of rain in June.

Temporary relief.

When it does rain, it can make a huge difference in the temperature. Trust me, 76 degrees is unusually cool for a Saturday morning at the end of July!

Storm over St. Matt's.

Still, I should be grateful for the 2.30" in July. Besides, the season's not over yet. We may yet get a gullywasher or two.

Karen

P.S. It's 4:18 AM, and I just heard thunder! Hooray! So did Cayenne, and she's come to me for comfort.

Now let's go see what the weather has been like for other Robins:


Linking List
as of 7:52 PM MST/PDT, August 14, 2010 (C)

Julie - Posted!
Julie's Web Journal
http://www.barrettmanor.com/julie/journal.aspx

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Linda - Posted!
Mommy's Treasures
http://mommystreasures.blogspot.com/

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

flashbulb100w
mga gihuna-huna
http://mgagihunahuna.wordpress.com

taylor
taylorsphotos
http://taylorsphotos-ta8551.blogspot.com/

Rich - Posted!
Rich Image
http://richimage.blogspot.com/

Sherrie **new blog!** - Posted!
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/

Ruth - Posted!
ScrabbleQueen
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

ellen b - Posted!
The Happy Wonderer
http://happywonderer.wordpress.com

Sandy - Posted!
From the Heart of Texas
http://sandyfromtheheartoftexas.com

Erin - Posted!
A Hardcore Life
http://erin-hardcorehensel.blogspot.com/

Rudo (Ethos) - Posted!
Passion in the Moments
http://ethos-photographic.blogspot.com/2010/08/round-robin-photo-challenge-about.html

Peggy - Posted!
Holmespun Fun Memes and Themes
http://holmespunfunmemesandthemes.blogspot.com

Round Robin: 3 x 3, Part One: Oh, Hail!

Appropriately, this is going to be a three part response to Round Robin: Anything in Threes (for 4/24/10). This Challenge was suggested by Marie of the blog Photographs and Memories. The idea is to present one theme in three images. And look! I'm going to do this three times!

This first theme takes advantage of an accident of weather. Tucson had a huge temperature drop this week, and on Thursday afternoon I heard hail hitting the roof. Naturally, I had to try to photograph it.



This shot of hail on our painted concrete patio is cropped from a much larger image.



Hail hitting my car doesn't look all that different from rain on the car, but I like the visible "dripping" effect here. Those aren't drips - they're falling hailstones, picked up by my camera flash.



Hailstones hide in the grass in another cropped image.

And that's it for Part One! Here's Part One of the Linking List:

Linking List, Part One
as of 7:15 PM MST

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Linda - Posted!
Mommy's Treasures
http://mommystreasures.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One.
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Part Two will be up in a few minutes.

Karen

EMPS: Sammy Safety Cone and Friends

How did Carly know what would happen on Wilmot Road this week? For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #77: The Cone Zone, she asked to see road construction - traffic cones, works crews or other inconvenient-but-necessary evidence of our highway safety dollars at work. A few days later, I reached the end of Calle Mumble and was greeted by this:



(If you lived in Tucson and were familiar with my part of town, this shot would be a dead giveaway of exactly where "Calle Mumble" is. But ah, well.)



This continued all week, slightly different stretches of the right lane closed off while crews tore up three patches of pavement and laid in three large metal plates, the kind that require an orange sign marked "BUMP."

But that's not what I wanted to talk about today.



It was probably close to ten years ago that John applied for a job as a graphic designer for the Pima County Highway Department. In order to show them what he could do, John created an animated GIF and other graphics featuring an original character he created, Sammy Safety Cone. He also made a fun animated GIF of toy Chevron cars driving down the street. He didn't get the job, but I thought he definitely should have. Although John doubts he even has a copy of those graphics files any more, they live on in my memory. And when I'm not too busy being annoyed and inconvenienced by the many road construction projects that impede my progress across town, the sight of a Sammy Safety Cone in the real world still makes me smile.



One of the reasons Tucson needs so much road work, aside from an ever-growing population driving over the same old streets, is the extremes of weather we get here. In the summer we get our famous "dry heat," followed by the summer monsoon rains that regularly flood the city streets. Then in the winter, if we're lucky, we get the milder "winter monsoon," with less thunder and lightning, but lots of rain, some flooding, and a good chance of snow in the mountains. The pavement expands in the summer heat and then cools and contracts, creating potholes and sinkholes and cracks for the flooding to fill and make worse.

Yesterday was a prime example of Tucson flooding. I had just worked around the clock - twice, almost - from early Friday afternoon to late Saturday morning with a half hour off for dinner before I returned to preparing all night long, despite significant computer issues, for two important meetings at church on Saturday morning. When I finally got home around 11 AM it was time to pick up my friend S. for our promised trip to the Animal Fair at Reid Park, there to find a new cat to replace the recently-departed Luna. And it was starting to rain.

We carried on anyway, got a neighbor to help life her mobility scooter into the trunk of my car, and headed over to Reid Park. When we arrived it was pouring down rain, and dozens of people and their dogs were starting to leave. After a week of 70 degree whether it was cold and windy, and S.'s umbrella quickly blew inside out. But we made it into the flimsy tent of one of the rescue groups, where we were immediately greeted by a very nice woman who was cuddling a black and white cat so similar to Luna that he could be her younger brother. Shamrock is a Turkish Van, according to the rescue group volunteer. When she let S. pet Shamrock, he snuggled into her and reached out to clutch her jacket with his front paws. We'll take him! She has to wait for several days while they get him neutered and chipped, but she'll have her year-and-a-half old, beautiful and affectionate new cat by the end of the week.

But I digress.

Coming back from the park, I drove through badly flooded streets as my trunk lid bumped up and down over S.'s scooter. My jacket and sweatshirt were soaked through and the driving was hairy. S. told me that many years ago, she saw a picture of people waterskiing on Alvernon Way, before they installed better drainage on that road. It still floods, but not quite that badly any more.



But there are compensations for weather like this. The ever-changing view of the Catalina Mountains in my rear view mirror can be dramatic and wonderful. And yesterday I saw a long orange pipe along the side of Wilmot, where Sammy and his friends were this week. Maybe they're working on the drainage.

Karen

The Week in Weather

I almost called this entry "The Weather at Sunset," because most of the shots I took for Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #71: Weather are from that time of day. It was a week of mostly wispy clouds, as you will see.

Monday, January 4th

From Tucson Sunsets

I thought I took a picture on Tuesday, but apparently not. I made up for it on Wednesday:

Wednesday, January 6th. Epiphany.

Still Epiphany.

On Wednesday, Epiphany, I was out and about buying new eyeglasses and a tripod (finally), and then went on to work. Suddenly I was in a rush to pick up Kevin for church at 6 PM. I took these shots while I was at it.

On Thursday I was at work from 11:30 to almost 9 PM, and didn't take any weather photos. I did take a picture of my office, so here is that:

No weather at work.

Then came Friday. I worked all afternoon, but left earlier than usual because a computer glitch kept me from finishing a project and besides, I was coming down with a cold. So the sky was still mostly blue, except for the clouds:

Friday, January 8

From the Picasa albumClouds Over Tucson

Friday, January 8

From Clouds Over Tucson

Carly also wanted to see an archived photo of "favorite weather conditions." Obviously we live in Tucson because we don't want to live where it snows all the time, but snow is an exciting event when it happens here. I wouldn't call snow my favorite, though. I prefer the monsoon storms when they get really dramatic. Here's a shot taken in front of St. Michael's during a summer monsoon storm in 2005:

From Tucson Weather

Pretty dramatic, wouldn't you say?

I'm running late on the Weekend Assignment, but should have it up in a couple of hours. I hope.

Karen

Weekend Assignment #251: Fantasy Sabbatical

Hooray! This week, two of you finally took pity on me after weeks and weeks of me begging for suggestions for future topics. Please welcome our first guest "professor," Florinda, assigner of today's Weekend Assignment. (The extra credit is mine.)

Weekend Assignment #251: You have a six-month paid sabbatical, and you can spend it anywhere you like EXCEPT on a beach drinking margaritas. Where do you go, and what do you do while you're there?

Extra Credit: In real life, have you ever gone anywhere enjoyable at an employer's expense?

Not being fond of either margaritas or lying on the beach, I have no problem at all with Florinda's limitations here. I suppose my own answer to this depends on whether I'm assuming the entity paying my way has employed me as an accountant or as a writer. I would throw in "church webmaster" as a third possibility, but to imagine such largess for so small a service stretches credulity a bit too far. So let's just take the other two paths, and see where they lead us...er, me.

Would researching amusement park accounting in Florida
or UK accounting practices constitute a "Jolly Holiday?"

Okay, then, as an accountant, where could I usefully go on sabbatical? Aside from back to school, there are numerous possibilities, depending on what sort of employer I have. If, for example, I worked for Disneyland (yes, I'd relocate for a high-paying job with them), I could take a sabbatical to Orlando, to observe accounting practices at Walt Disney World and related entities, and research best practices at other Florida attractions. If I worked for an accounting firm, I could conceivably go intern at FASB, the Federal Accounting Standards Board, in Norwalk, CT. Or I could go to London, and research international accounting standards there. Yes, I think I'd like that better!

Or if I were working for a governmental entity, I could go to Washington DC, and observe the new administration's efforts to get the economy back on track, and the accounting implications for various government agencies. The GAO would no doubt be the key component of my researches.

Now, if I could get a publisher to pay me an advance to research a book for six months, that would really be something. I'd definitely try to go to London for that. Perhaps I'd research a Doctor Who interview book, gathering interviews with people who are still alive from the entire history of the show, with side trips to Wales and elsewhere. Or I could write a survey of British children's fiction, and explore the allure of London as a place of magical characters. Heck, I'm sure I could get a book out of selected holdings of the British Museum, or the writing of T.H. White. And yes, I could even explore London as the setting for a novel.

You know, if I had my choice of any of these, I'd take my six months in London, thank-you-very-much!

As for the extra credit, I was fortunate to be a travel agent in the late 1980s, when there was still such a thing as Fam (familiarization) trips. In March 1988 (or was in March 1989?) Travel Tree sent me on a three day whirlwind tour of Anaheim, CA called Anaheim Tag Days. I toured a number of hotels, danced at the Disneyland Hotel, had my picture taken with an Elvis impersonator, visited a wax museum, picked up a zillion brochures in the convention center, and had half a day each at Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm. It was physically and emotionally exhausting, but a lot of fun. A year and a half later or thereabouts, I took another Fam trip, this time to Mazatlan. I think I was actually in Mazatlan for 23 hours, during which time I toured something like ten or fifteen hotels (mostly on foot, in 90 degree, humid weather), held an iguana, ate dinner at a place with a Folklorico show, and had 45 minutes at the beach with a boogie board. Beautiful place, Mazatlan, but by the time I left I could hardly walk due to the killer schedule arranged by the tour company.

I have photos from both of these trips, and if I can find the box they're in I'll post samples sometime over the next week.

So where would you go on sabbatical if you could, and what would you do? Tell us about it in your blog, with a link back to this entry, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week to post the results. Meanwhile...

For Weekend Assignment #250: Hot or Cold?, I asked you whether you'd rather be too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer, if you had to choose one or the other. Here are excerpts from your responses:

Laura said...

Since I'm a redhead, I also don't like sunlight, and winter tends to be cloudier and thus I get sunburned less than in the summer. It definitely feels like New York has been colder and windier this year than in the past.

Florinda said...

To my mind, 80-degree weather does NOT say "January," although I can certainly understand the allure. I spent ten of my growing-up years in Florida and have been in SoCal for almost seven years now, so it's not like warmer winters are unfamiliar to me - it's that they just don't seem right, somehow.

Julie said...

Do I have to pick? I hate the extremes, which is pretty funny considering I live in Texas. My office is too hot in the summer, and too cold in the winter. But I suppose I can pile more clothes on, so I'd reluctantly say winter, though I'll regret it.

Mike said...

As of the last forecast I saw, we are going to be approximately 5 degrees tomorrow and probably won't get above zero Thursday. That's too cold for me. I can handle winter when it is in the 20's and 30's, but once it gets into the teens, I want out.

That's it for now! Assuming nobody sends you out of town this week (or even if they do!), I hope you'll turn up here to tell us your preferred sabbatical project for this Weekend Assignment. And yes, I'm still soliciting your suggestions for future Weekend Assignment topics. Email me your ideas at mavarin@aol.com anytime. If I use your topic you'll get full credit and my undying thanks. And let's have a round of applause for Florinda's great Assignment!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #250: Hot or Cold?

This business of coming up with Weekend Assignment topics seems to get harder every week. But here's what I've got for you this time:

Weekend Assignment #250: We're getting into the coldest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, so I expect things are getting a mite chilly in some places. If you had to pick one or the other, would you rather be too cold in the winter, or too hot in the summer?

Extra Credit: How has the weather been so far this season, compared to past years?

Here's mine.

post-Christmas hail storm, 2008

From the Picasa album Tucson Weather

Here is what my car looked like the night after Christmas, as it was getting hailed on. Tucson seems to get more hail than snow in the city, but not much of either. Whole years go by in which the only snow I see is a trace (or a little more than a trace) on the mountains that surround the city. Even that is usually gone in less than a day.

About as cold and snowy as Tucson gets - January 22, 2007.

And that's pretty much the way I like it. After all, there's a reason I live in Tucson. We're here specifically because we drove around the country in 1986, "looking for someplace where it wasn't winter." There are a few days each year - well, most years - when the temperature gets down around freezing at some point overnight. But it's rare for us to see under 50 degrees in the daytime. I'll admit that sometimes I root for a few hours of snow in the city, but I never again want to live where 11 degrees in the daytime is a plausible temperature.

Winter in Manlius, NY, 1971

I grew up in Manlius, NY, after all, where it wasn't as cold as Minnesota or Alaska, on average, but it wasn't exactly balmy in winter, either. I've told the story about the time when I was in elementary school, and the principal declared an "outside noon hour" the day after it got down to -23 degrees F. We were required to wear skirts or dresses in those days, so we froze our little legs off outside! Over the years I've come to wonder whether I got that temperature wrong or misremembered, and maybe it was only -23 with the windchill factored in. But I went to the NOAA pages for Syracuse just now, and it seems we've hit the anniversary of the day in 1968 when the low was -22. I was 11 years old. If that's not the specific day I'm remembering, it's close enough to corroborate its likelihood.

105 on May 19th, 2008 - our anniversary.

Of course we pay for warm Tucson winters with some fairly substantial heat in the summer. I won't claim that I like 105 degrees F, but overall I tolerate it better than 5 degrees F. Best of all would be to have lots of air conditioning and cool drinks in the summer, lots or heat and warm clothing in the winter. But if I have to choose, I find that nearly 30 years after leaving the Syracuse area, I still have no great longing to return to winter weather - except to visit, maybe for a day, to see if it's as miserable as I remember it being.

And what's the winter been like so far here? No snow, but there was that hail, and overall it's mostly been colder than average. But believe me, I'm not complaining!

So what is your stand on being hot vs. being cold? Tell us about it in your blog, with a link back to this entry, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week to post the results. Meanwhile...

For Weekend Assignment #249: Looking Back at 2009, I asked you to write about 2009 as if you had just lived through it. Here are excerpts from your responses:

Julie said...

This was the year the social networks exploded on me. After being buried under a virtual avalanche of Twitter spam, Facebook pokes, and invitations to put my photos in every obscure Flickr group known to humankind, I pulled the plug

Florinda said...

Change may have come to America in 2008, but we didn't really see it do very much until the year just ended. And of course, it hasn't happened fast enough for some people, nor has it always been the specific kind of change that people wanted to see, but one thing that doesn't seem to change is that it's impossible to make everyone happy all the time. But reports that the end of the world was imminent after November 4, 2008 - most of which came from my uncle via e-mail - turned out to be overstated, as they usually are, thank goodness. (I almost said "end of civilization" instead of "end of the world" in that sentence, but sometimes it feels like "civilization" has been on leave of absence for quite a while already...)

Mike said...

First off, I want to say thank you to everybody who voted for me in the special election for Barack Obama's senate seat. I figured I was the only one without some ties to the corruption that has been basically running our state for years, so I thought I might have a chance. Of course, because of said corruption, it was impossible for me to win; but, hey, I got some votes. Thanks!

That's it for now! As cold as it may get this week, I hope you'll crawl out from under the covers long enough to tell us your temperature preference for this Weekend Assignment. A reminder: I'm still running low on ideas here, so I still need your input, more desperately with each passing week. What would you like to see as a Weekend Assignment topic? Email me your suggestions (mavarin at aol.com). If I use your topic you'll get full credit and my undying thanks.

Karen

Look What I Found, in the Sky!

Weekend Assignment #163: "Take a Picture of Your Local Weather." (As suggested by Betty of My Day, My Interests)

In keeping with the simplicity of this assignment, I will not be writing a "novel" tonight. The fact that I've come down with something intestinal and fever-inducing has a lot to do with this. I've spent most of this evening sitting around reading Old Man's War, which helps. Had I known I'd actually like the book, I wouldn't have resisted reading it for so long.

Anyway. I took all these pictures after I left work today, a little early because of being sick. These first two I took around 5:30 PM:

I believe that's called a halo. I've photographed one before,
but it's been a while, and I don't feel like looking it up again.

And I think this is a halo with sun dogs, a first for me.

I had no idea that these phenomena were in the sky for my camera to find. I only saw that it was sunny and bright. I deliberately shot at the sun to see what would happen, but the sky was too bright; I couldn't even see the sun in the LCD display. But I've darkened these two photos quite a bit, and voila!

Almost sunset. Look! A wisp of cloud.

And I saturated the heck out of this one, because,
you know, sunsets are pretty! And I didn't want to
hang around outside while sick, waiting for the
prime sunset moment.

That's it for now. Good night!


Karen