Weather tidbits

As weather is one of my "interests", I figured I'd pass on some trivial tidbits I've been digging up over the past few days:

Tomorrow and Sunday (1/20 - 1/21) are statistically the two coldest days of the year. What this means for this weekend is basically nothing, as temps are supposed to be in the mid-50's tomorrow. However, you can look at it as we are "meteorologically" 1/2 way through Winter. Just like Dec. 21 is the shortest day of the year, and I always look at it as "well, the days will only get longer from here" - You have to look at Sunday as "well, the overall PATTERN should be warmer weather from here on out". Of course, realizing that we've had a fairly mild Winter, at least as far as high temperatures go, we may still be in for a rude awakening. But overall, we should start to soon see more and more relatively warmer days mixing in with the cold. It's at least something to look forward to. Beach season can't be that far away, can it?

Another bit of trivia is that 12 years ago tomorrow, we set the all time record for low temperatures in this region with an astounding -20 degrees F!!! I remember that day well. It was in the middle of a LONG week of brutally cold weather. I remember Sunday night into Monday, we had about 6-10 inches of snow. Then an extreme cold front moved in and instantly turned everything to solid ice. The roads which weren't plowed (which were most of them b/c of the quickness between the storm and the cold weather moving in) turned into icy ruts, up to 6 inches deep, that even the plows could not clear. This weather lasted 4-5 days, and schools were closed for all of them b/c of the extreme cold. I believe the temperature rarely went above zero for those days, and the wind chills were somewhere in the -30 to -40 range. It was BY FAR the coldest weather the region has ever seen, in the modern weather tracking era. I can remember going out to my car, with the temp hovering somewhere around -15. You couldn't leave even a single inch of skin exposed for fear of very rapid frostbite. I was breathing through my nose, and my nostrils froze shut! That is COLD folks! And driving for the whole week was trecherous, at best, as you had to do like 5-10 mph b/c of the ice and all the ruts. Fortunately, the closest bar was only about 1.5 miles away (YP), and a 20 min. car ride got us there.

Think warm....

s42