We’ve had some crazy weather the past few days. It really become apparent once you spell it out clearly like this:
Wednesday: Warm, sunny, mid 60’s (F). Really felt like spring was here!
Thursday: Still pretty warm, but the temperature really started to drop in the afternoon.
Friday: Got cold pretty fast, and then started to snow. Hard. By 2pm it was coming down at a rate of about an inch an hour - and it continued like that until around midnight.
Saturday: Sunny and warm enough (32-33 degrees) that a lot of snow started to melt.
Sunday: Sunny but cold (20’s).
Monday: Warm enough during the day that snow started to melt again - probably just a few degrees above freezing.
Monday night: It started snowing again.
Okay, Mother Nature… I know this is New England, but seriously: WTF???
So I woke up this morning, and the weather guy on the radio said it was 54 degrees out (at 7am). And then he said that we would have 6-12 inches of snow tomorrow.
Say what?
Yes, snow. My ForecastFox plugin currently tells me that there is a Winter Storm Watch in effect for this region. And I’m even seeing the word “nor’easter” used.
Yesterday it was easily more than 60 degrees out. It was warm, sunny, and very pleasant. Tomorrow there will be snow.
God I love living in New England! 
So I woke up this morning, and my ForecastFox plugin looks like this:
Yeah, that’s current conditions, today’s forecast, and tonight, tomorrow, and tomorrow night’s forecast as well.
I love snow.
So, back home it hasn’t snowed yet - even in the upper parts of Maine - but here in Australia it was a white Christmas for some people (though not here where I am; it was just the coldest Christmas in 13 years).
So, either we are changing the climate, or this is just some normal climatic cycle - one that involves a much longer timeframe than we are used to thinking about. Because, when you think about it, we tend to only notice trends and cycles that we can see ourselves - which obviously limits things to the length of our own lives, or the few years we’ve been on the Earth keeping records (which isn’t long, in the grand scheme of things). So you have to wonder whether we really ARE changing the climate or whether we are just seeing a new cycle come along that we have never seen before.
Current mood: Caffinated
Currently listening to: Super Metroid ‘All the World in One Girl’ OC Remix
Wow. What a week it’s been since I last wrote here!
Anyway, the obvious stuff: it snowed. It snowed A LOT. I drove in the snow. It was fun! AWD is such a cool thing, there was literally NOWHERE I couldn’t go. I went up Mt. Vernon St, up all the hills I could find in fact; none of them could hold me back, even when they were compacted snow with no sand AT ALL. Ice? Whatever - I drove on. I even got to do some radical donuts down in the Civic Center - with the hand brake, whee! I think I got close to a true axial 360 - but I’m not sure. On Sunday, when the storm was over, there was a LOT of snow down in the Civic Center, and I took Amanda there to teach her the finer points of snow driving, and to have her get used to how the car feels in the snow. However, there was so much snow that it actually came up higher than the front fenders on the car! So, I drove into it anyway, and didn’t get stuck at all (although turning was a bit tough). Isn’t AWD sweet? Amanda praticed on the better-plowed portion of the lot, and then I had her go out onto the roads (which were pretty good by this point, but still slippery - and this is Fitchburg after all, which isn’t renowned for its plowing abilities). She did VERY well, I must say, which is a relief to me. All in all, the snow storm was fun, fun, and more fun. The car preformed impecably - which is what I was hoping for.
I’ve been very zombie-like lately; work is really doing a number on my conciousness. Long days of driving (snow doesn’t do much for traffic I’m afraid), and long days of support (which is down a bit, thanks to my MAD PR0GR4MM1NG SK1LLZ) followed by long nights of programming (hax0ring).
Something tells me I had a lot more on my mind this morning, but I tend to forget all of that by the time I actually have a free minute to write my thoughts down. Oh well.
-Keithius
Keithius | March 20, 2007
