3.2.2024 – further furthermore

further furthermore
moreover meanwhile and
additionally

This morning I read the article, ‘We knew this was coming’: western US hunkers down amid avalanche warnings and gale-force winds” by Nina Lakhani and Dani Anguiano in the Guardian (March 1, 2024) and I got hung up by the quote from the National Weather Warning that stated:

There is a high chance (over 70%) of substantial, long-lasting disruptions to daily life in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada Mountains Friday-Saturday, where blizzard conditions and 5+ feet of snow are expected.

I liked the idea of … a high chance of substantial, long-lasting disruptions to daily life … through Saturday.

And I wrote this haiku:

high chance substantial,
long-lasting disruptions to
daily life expected

I guess that it means that the substantial, long-lasting disruptions to daily life could HAPPEN through Saturday but the substantial, long-lasting disruptions to daily life could LAST much longer than just through the weekend.

On the other hand, my wife pointed out that 24 to 48 hour power/cellphone/internet/TV outage WAS a substantial, long-lasting disruption to daily life for a lot of people today.

I went and read the complete Short Range Public Discussion Weather Statement from the NWS.

As this blog and these haiku are meant to be about words, I have to take my hat off and applaud those folks at the National Weather service for the all inclusive text in their Short Range Public Discussion.

The Short Range Public Discussion consists of 4 bullet points and seven paragraphs.

The first paragraph starts out with, “A second winter storm will impact the West Coast …”

The following six paragraphs start as follows:

Furthermore, the storm will …

Moreover, in addition to …

In addition, the …

Further, cold air will …

Meanwhile, upper-level energy …

And finally, Additionally, upper-level energy moving …

With a “Also, on Friday …” tucked into the last paragraph.

I don’t know but there something hypnotic, something Shakespearian, like a bass note in a Bach fugue as each new aspect of this storm is introduced into the Short Range Public Discussion of the weather.

I can easily imagine it as a rant of someone in a movie or tv show spouting off on all the things that went wrong on their weekend off.

It was Oscar Wilde who said, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

Well!

Mr. Wilde never met the United States National Weather Service.

PS – OH AND, here is the complete Short Range Public Discussion as it appeared on Thursday, February 29, 2024 at 2:58AM (EST).

Short Range Forecast Discussion
NWS Weather Prediction Center College Park MD
258 AM EST Thu Feb 29 2024

Valid 12Z Thu Feb 29 2024 – 12Z Sat Mar 02 2024

…Heavy snow over parts of the Cascades, the Northern Intermountain

Region, Northern Rockies, Northern California, and Sierra Nevada
Mountains…

…Heavy lake-effect snow southeast of Lake Ontario and over the Upper
Great Lakes…

…Rain from the Gulf Coast to parts of northern Mid-Atlantic and shower
and thunderstorms along the Central Gulf Coast and Southeast…

A second winter storm will impact the West Coast on Thursday and Friday. The storm will create heavy mountain snow that will affect many passes. Multiple feet of snow are likely (over 80% chance) for higher elevations, especially above 5000 feet, including many Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountain passes. Extremely heavy snow rates surpassing 3 inches per hour are likely.

Furthermore, the storm will produce blizzard conditions in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In detail, strong winds will cause significant blowing/drifting snow and whiteout conditions, making travel impossible in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There is a high chance (over 70%) of substantial, long-lasting disruptions to daily life in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada Mountains Friday-Saturday, where blizzard conditions and 5+ feet of snow are expected.

Moreover, in addition to the snow, coastal rain will develop over parts of the Pacific Northwest Thursday into Saturday. Coastal rain will develop over parts of California Thursday morning, continuing into Saturday.

In addition, the widespread damaging wind will develop over the Western U.S. Wind gusts of 55+ mph are forecasted across much of the West, particularly across higher elevations and the Intermountain West, where 75+ mph gusts are possible. These winds would likely down trees and power lines, resulting in power outages across affected areas.

Further, cold air will lower snow levels Friday into Saturday. As the storm moves south, snow levels will lower into some Northern California and Sierra Nevada Mountain foothill communities. Much colder air is forecast for Saturday, with temperatures 10-20 degrees below normal.

Meanwhile, upper-level energy moving across the Great Lakes into the Northeast will create lake-effect snow over the northeast portion of the U.P. of Michigan, with the heaviest lake-effect snow southeast of Lake Ontario on Thursday.

Additionally, upper-level energy moving over the Southern Rockies will move eastward to the Mid-Atlantic by Saturday, producing rain and higher-elevation snow over the Southern Rockies Thursday. Overnight Thursday, showers and thunderstorms will develop over parts of the Southern Plains, moving into the Lower Mississippi, Tennessee, and Southern Ohio Valleys and parts of the Southeast by Friday. The showers and thunderstorms will continue over parts of the Southeast through Saturday. On Friday, rain will move into parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley, moving into parts of the Northeast by Saturday. Also, on Friday, scattered pockets of rain/freezing rain will develop over the highest elevations of parts of the Central/Southern Appalachians.

2.3.2024 – hype train leaving the

hype train leaving the
station doesn’t mean we need
to all get on it

What else could I be talking about but the weather?

In the story, When the Storm Online Is Worse Than the One Outside By Shawn Hubler, Mr. Hubler writes:

“The online environment in 2024 is a mess,” said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

In recent years, amateur weather trackers’ posts have quickly spread through social media. Some have responsibly shared the latest information from experts, but others have found that extreme language can result in more shares and likes.

Brian Garcia, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s San Francisco Bay Area office, said he and his colleagues had become more aggressive in combating misinformation.

“People want to increase their following on social media, and one of the best ways is to go catastrophic and alarm people,” Mr. Garcia said. “But just because the hype train is leaving the station doesn’t mean we to need to all get on it.”

The weather.

The poor old weather.

Everybody talks about the weather but nobody every does anything about it.

2.2.2024 – here we are again

here we are again
the days of the long shadows
were we ever here?

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

My wife and I try to walk around out in the neighborhood everyday, twice if the weather and my schedule work out.

It is an exercise regime that works with my outlook on physical exercise.

I have noticed that several times a year (it really should be only twice a year but the time change throws a curveball into the mix) the sun lines up low in the sky with a length of sidewalk and produces these long shadows.

From the picture, you can see we are some minutes or maybe a day or two away from the shadow lining up exactly with the sidewalk but you can’t count on sunny days even here in the low country of South Carolina so I thought I better grab the image while the grabbing was good.

I have, by the calendar, seen these shadows stretch out and line up about 16 times since we moved here.

The sidewalk is the same.

The street ahead is the same.

The shadows pretty much look the same thought the bulky of our clothes changes from early spring to late fall.

The sun is the same.

What has changed in the last four years?

Truly the more things change the more they stay the same.

With this in mind though, I agree with Delwin Brown, who in his 1994 book, Boundaries of Our Habitations: Tradition and Theological Construction, (State University of New York Press) wrote, “There must be some continuity with the past, “or else the world is a madhouse.” Hence, the more things change, the more they stay the same; the more things stay the same, the more they change.”

Full disclosure I am not familiar with this book but when I looked up the the saying to get the french spelling of Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, I came across Mr. Brown’s quote in the lazy man’s best friend, Wikipedia.

I am reminded of snow.

If you grew in the western part of the State of Michigan in the back half of the 20th century like I did, you saw a lot of snow.

Early in your life, your learned from your Mom or your brothers or your sisters or your kindergarten teacher that NO TWO SNOWFLAKES are the same.

I put it to you that NO TWO OF ANYTHING are the same.

No two snowflakes.

No two days.

No two nothing.

But besides being different, all snowflakes are snowflakes.

They are all the same.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The more things stay the same, the more they change.

Then again, there is the shadow.

Here and gone.

Dark and bold in its outline in bright sun and a cloud comes along and covers the sun and the shadow is gone.

Was it really there?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The more things stay the same, the more they change.

Maybe we weren’t really here in the first place.

1.26.2024 – fog, little cat feet

fog, little cat feet
sits looking over harbor
on silent haunches

From Fog in Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg (Henry Holt and Company, 1916).

I will bet you one dollar you knew this poem.

I will double that bet and guess you knew it was Mr. Sandburg.

I will double that bet and guess that its the only poem by Mr. Sandburg you know.

Maybe a safe bet, but if there are two things I hope from all this is that most folks know this poem and that it is by this poet and for today, and you know what, that is enough!

So let us go on out to the kitchen and grab ourselves a beer to celebrate if I won or do the same thing if I lost.

Fog as published in Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg (Henry Holt and Company, 1916).

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

By the way with a 60 degree swing in the temperature since last weekend and with the ocean still at about 55 degrees, we gots ourselves a FOG warning here in the Low Country / Coastal Empire.

That’s what they call it down here.

11.30.2023 – these are tawny days

these are tawny days
bashful mornings hurl gray mist
on stripes of sunrise

These are the tawny days your face comes back
The grapes take on purple the sunsets redden early on the trellis.
The bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes of sunrise.
Creep, silver on the field, the frost is welcome
Run on, yellow halls on the hills, and you tawny
pumpkin flowers, chasing your lines of orange
Tawny days and your face again

Tawny by Carl Sandburg in his book, Smoke and Steel, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., (1920).

The website, https://www.vocabulary.com/, defines tawny as an adjective meaning of a light brown to brownish orange color; the color of tanned leather.

The online Merriam-Webster says that tawny is from the Middle English, from Anglo-French tané, tauné, literally, tanned, from past participle of tanner to tan and that the first recorded use of the word is from the 14th century.

The book of Genesis, Chapter 1, verses 2-5 state:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

For myself, when the Bible reports he separated the light from the darkness, I think that God set up what we know as the planet earth and when he separated the light from the darkness, God gave the planet a push that started it in motion so that on the planet, day was separated from night by the rotation of the planet.

From that moment all laws of what we now know as physics came into play.

Neither here nor there, that means, for me anyway, that God had a timer running as the earth revolved on its axis and when the Bible reports “… the first day”, God knew just what he meant, but I digress.

Anyway, at the end of that first day, the light sank below the horizon and on the morning of the 2nd day the light came up.

I am betting that when that light came, it was a tawny day and anyone who might be there to see it would see that the bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes of sunrise.

My wife is not fond of these sunrise pictures I take with my iPhone because she knows that to take them, I am driving one handed, with my other hand holding my iPhone as I cross the Cross Island Bridge on Hilton Head Island.

I know it’s goofy but what can one do?

We live in the low country and it is flat.

There are few views to be had anywhere.

The Cross Island Bridge is one of few places you can see anything of the area.

And, as Augustus McCrae said the book Lonesome Dove, “, and “…if he missed sunrise, he would have to wait out a long stretch of heat and dust before he got to see anything so pretty.”