Wist.

They're seeding the soccer field out the window, here, and the grass is green and growing.

There's snow -- a very little snow -- on the little mountains, but this is still no kind of winter and I still feel lost.

But the last time I looked, despite a week of subfreezing temperatures there were no bedroom suites on the Charles in front of MIT. That's the usual measure of deep Winter around here; maybe they just aren't getting the same grade of students....

I just looked at that link, and it announces the "Hi" of the day at -3, and the current temp at -2.

In other words, it's warmer now than at any point in this 24-hour period, including now.

I've seen this on weather sites before. I suspect it's because the predicted high doesn't change once they set it. You'd think they'd code the site to bump up the predicted high if it's exceeded, but they don't.

I grew up in Michigan. New York "winters" are pathetic.

Has anyone told Alison about the moose store yet?

MKK

January's ice and snow
Make your face and fingers glow.

February's snow and sleet
Freeze the toes right off your feet...
-Flanders & Swann

Minnnnn-e-sota
Where the wind comes whistling through the plains
And the snow and sleet will fill your street
And you'll wish that you had put on chains....
- Prarie Home Companion (tune: Oklahoma)

The weather tried to freeze him
It tried its level best
At a hundred degrees below zero
He buttoned up his vest.
- The Frozen Logger

Talk of your cold! Through the parka's fold
It stabbed like a driven nail...
- Robert W. Service

"'Taint nothin'. Remember '95? We had snow every calendar month that year."
-- Practically everyone in Colebrook this morning

My favourite aspect of The Frozen Logger was his approach to tonsorial work:

He never shaved a whisker
Off of his horny hide;
He hammered in the bristles,
And bit them off inside.

Peter's bunny, Fluffy -- an extremely hardy animal who is happier outside pouncing on the snow on Peter's deck when it's 19 degrees than he is in the house -- is in his cage on Peter's train table. While the bunny seemed to continue to be content outside as the temperature plunged, I was having nightmares about having to bring in a frozen bunny to the vet. So, somewhat to Fluffy's irritation, I brought him inside.

I must be getting acclimated to the cold. I found myself running out to go pick up Peter from his chess class wearing a sweater but no coat. It was 17 degrees.

Hey! I know that song as The Logger Lover. I filked it once to write the Filker Lover--fortunately lost in the past somewhere.

MKK

Me too me too, Graydon, only we have no snow on any of the mountains here. SIGH. Everything I write in the winter is snowy, now that I live in California. I've set stories in Moscow, northern Finland, Iceland, Boston, the U.P. of Michigan, and Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota. It's an alarming sort of a pattern to notice in oneself.

All of my best clothes are layers of wool. I would trade any of you-all this 60 degree day for your -2, and smile while the windchill froze my lenses to my eyes.

As I was driving along the West Side Highway, I actually saw ice forming at the edges of the Hudson. I've never seen that before, to my knowledge, and it frightened me. The Sprain Brook Reservoir here in Yonkers iced over a couple of weeks ago, which it only does in deep cold.

It got ~up~ to 5 today. At least that was above zero F. Right now at midnight? It's the same, but below zero.

I'm glad we're in ~southern~ NH.

I think we made it up into the low ten's. Right now it's 8 at Logan Airport, with the wind chill making it -20. I hope my car starts tonight. I don't want to be waiting for AAA at 4 am!

Kate

"As I was driving along the West Side Highway, I actually saw ice forming at the edges of the Hudson. I've never seen that before, to my knowledge, and it frightened me."

You would hated the weather 200 years ago. The winter of 1780 was so cold that the ice on the Hudson was thick enough that the British were able to transport cannon across the river on sledges from Manhattan to New Jersey.

http://www.lihistory.com/4/hs424a.htm

This is all making me very happy I live in a place where I can ride my motorcycle any day of the year. And if I want cold and snow, I can drive to it.

Oh, dear. Poor Graydon. I don't suppose it helps much to point out that Vancouver gets far more winter-like than, say, Los Angeles?

I realize that there are places with much less winter than Vancouver -- it is cool, it is drizzly, there has been frost on the roads and a rime of ice in the ditches, which things are not often seen anywhere that palm trees grow -- but I was born in Ottawa and grew up in the climate zone of the upper Ottawa Valley; the world is supposed to have winter in it, and I miss the Lady of the Ice even knowing that She is not gone, though She is not here.

Whereas here in Gothenburg, forecasts say we'll hit +8°C soon. (That's 46 above, for the Farenheighters.) Weather went from -12°C to 0 to +5 in three days. I'm not sure whether to be relieved (none of the usual slush!) or dismayed (spring already?)...

rbs: I'm told that winters were generally worse around the US Revolution; note that in the famous picture of Washington crossing the Delaware, several of the soldiers are not rowing but fending off ice (which I'm told hasn't been seen in quantity in that area (~Trenton) in some time.))
There have been worse unexpected freezes. At Kronborg (aka "Hamlet's castle") the sea side is not nearly as well defended as the land side; we were told that one winter the strait froze, all the way to Sweden (several miles), hard enough that a force walked over and took the castle from behind. (Per cd, sounds like that won't happen this year.)
Graydon: are you not even seeing snow? On my one visit to Vancouver (early July 1991), we found pockets of snow still surviving in the shady areas of the ski area overlooking the harbor from the north; does that all turn to sleet and drizzle by the time it gets to sea level?

Snow does wind up on the tops of the little mountains, but it has not this year actually made it into Vancouver; I've seen snow only once, big soft flakes that hit the ground but didn't stay out where work is in Burnaby.

I feel entitled to feel sorry for myself. Minneapolis is currently at -10, which is not only colder than Colebrook or NYC, but colder than Lisbon, NY, where I grew up. Lisbon is on the St. Lawrence Seaway, and tends towards bloody cold. Just at the moment, they're at a balmy -2. Mom still gets letters from there that start out with, "Has been a warm day, today, only 20 below." Forty below for more than a week was not uncommon. I gotta say, even heavy tights are completely insufficient in that kind of cold -- and yes, I'm old enough that wearing pants to school was not permitted. I slipped on the ice right outside the door to the school, once. By the time I'd gotten inside, the blood on my knee had frozen. It shocked the school nurse.

Lydia (and all the rest of you): You certainly are entitled to feel sorry for yourself; I'm feeling sorry for you too. It's been pretty mild here in Seattle. I haven't needed my heavy coat any more than I did in northern CA. But I do run warmer these days than I used to. I think if we were meant to live in those sorts of temperatures, we'd all have built-in fur coatss. Brrr. And ick. Y'all stay warm!

MKK

Today's high will be -11 in Toronto (that's 12.2 in Fahrenheit). Cold enough for me. I'm *much* happier now than I was in the summer, and it feels good to have a *proper* two-sweater-under-the-coat winter, again, rather than these insipid, drizzly grey, too-hot-with-a-sweater, too-cold-without seasons we've had the past few years.

It's 22F here in Atlanta today, with a wind-chill of about 9deg -- VERY cold for our climate. I actually had to wear my coat today.

Even in our moderate climate, I *hate* winter. I hate the dark (especially) and the cold. But someone on the Harplist posted a poem that (temporarily) makes me feel better about winter:

Deep in the arms of winter
The snow falls like a blessing
The wild things sleep below the ground
They are not cold, they are not lonely,
Deep in the arms of winter.

Deep in the arms of winter
The starlight is holy.
The Hunter stalks across the sky.
The dancers dance; I hear their music,
Deep in the arms of winter.

Deep in the arms of winter
The flame calls like a spirit.
The hearthfire warms our very souls.
In heart and home we are enfolded
Deep in the arms of winter,
Deep in the arms of winter.

{attribution unknown}

Chip Hitchcick: "rbs: I'm told that winters were generally worse around the US Revolution; note that in the famous picture of Washington crossing the Delaware, several of the soldiers are not rowing but fending off ice (which I'm told hasn't been seen in quantity in that area (~Trenton) in some time.))"

Natch. Nearing the tail end of the Little Ice Age. The onset of the LIA is believed to have caused the Norse to abandon their colonies in Greenland and Vinland. Not necessarily colder winters, but cooler, wetter summers which caused trouble with food storage and also more storms in the North Atlantic.

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html

It's -25C here in North West River, Labrador at the hottest part of the day.
(Don't know what that is in Fahrenheit)

I have amended the following to avoid shocking the pureminded - it is by that well-known poet Anon, and appeared on the biffy wall recently.

Cold as the lock on the outhouse door,
Cold as the feet of an elderly whore,
Striver, Labrador

I, too, am all for the nose-freeze-shut balaclava-wearing frosty-eyebrows kind of winter. But...with SNOW!!! No SNOW here in Mipples. No skiing. Freezing perennials. No piled sparkly white SNOW to look at against the brilliant blue sky on sunny days.

:(

No ice on Stora Be4lt this year, no (or not enough for us to bring an army across in a surprise attack on the knavish Dane, anyway). Though Ve4nern (Sweden's largest lake) had so much ice that cargo traffic had to have icebreaker escorts a few weeks ago.

The worst thing about the sudden thaw is that we've gone from 70/30 sunny/snowy days to 100% overcast, with fog, drizzle, or rain.

-25° C = -13° F.

My brother gets that in Ottawa at the start of next week. Here in Boston my only regret is that I don't have a proper parka or any legwear better than denims after a dozen years in the Decadent Tropics of Massachusetts. Other than that and not having a working furnace, it makes me quite nostalgic for my youth in Toronto.

The main downside of the unexpectedly cold weather is that many people here assume that a warm spell in a couple of days will clear their ice, so some street corners have healthy dwarf cirques, lilliputian morraines, microeskers, and minidrumlins. A larger scale failure of foresight seems to have led to a lot of freeze distortion in the roadway of Rte 128 in the marshier bits of Cape Ann.

Here in St Andrews it's been rain, rain, drizzle, more rain and warm.(Well, at least in nthe 30s and 40s.) The aconites are starting out, their yellow punctuting a row of primula. Snowdrops are everywhere. The fields are still (or again) green.

Wednesday we go back to Massachusetts and a foot and a half of snow on our deck.

Jane

Jane, don't worry, the snow's not that deep: by now it's sintered down to a sheet of clear ice only three or four inches thick.

Portland: 49 degrees, raining.

I wonder if the cold snap back east will help put the kibosh on the West Nile epidemic.

Hey, this could push back the Kudzu Line! I feel much better now.

Barbara, you're in Labrador? Yeeesh. Don't you people get to, like, condescend to people in Winnipeg for being wimps about cold weather?

If anyone's interested, here's a piece from the NYTimes, on why New Yorkers are kvetching so much about this weather.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Yes, I'm in Labrador, where we have 10 months of winter and 2 months of really poor skidooing weather. I was in Las Vegas in December once, walking around with no coat on in balmy 65F weather, and listening to the locals complain about the bitter cold...

Thirty below this morning on my front porch. Now that's chilly.

Walked a mile and a half in it, too. (Uphill, if you must know.)

Never so glad that I wear a beard.

Jim, in my experience the only downside to facial hair in that kind of cold is that you could snap your moustache off if you get too nervous about whether the moisture in it is nasal discharge or frozen moisture from one's breath and wipe it hard before it thaws.