Yes, it's cold. So what?

It is minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit as I type this. It's cold outside. It's also January, a month not noted for balmy breezes or warm, sunny days. The fact it's cold outside should come as a surprise to no one.

It's also sort of snowing. Not especially dramatically, but an occasional flake or two has wafted down. Also not a surprise at this time of year, especially when we get hit with lake effect all the time. The Upper Peninsula sits between three of the Great Lakes: Superior to the north, Michigan and Huron to the south. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, if those lakes aren't solid sheets of ice, somewhere in the U.P. lake effect snow will fall.

We are, in short, having what for us Yoopers should be viewed as totally normal weather. It's not some sort of bizarre, unexpected natural disaster. It's winter. Hazardous driving conditions, including possible whiteout conditions, and life threatening cold temperatures are the norm up here from early November well into April. So why did everything shut down today? I have no clue, unless all the hype by the news media over the cold polar air pushing deeper than usual into southern states convinced various persons that an actual emergency existed. I can see closing schools in Missouri when it gets into negative numbers for kids waiting at bus stops; I can't see closing them in Michigan where we cope with this crap all the time.

What is truly bizarre, though, when it comes to coping with what is actually pretty ordinary winter weather is the number of businesses that shut down. Bars. Restaurants. Stores. I find all the closing announcements to be more than a tad unreal. Am I the only one who thinks that if snowmobilers and ice fishermen are able to go about pursuing their hobbies as usual there is no major winter storm event going on?

I will confess I tend to be a tad blase about winter cold. I still remember the fun times during my youth when there were cold spells that lasted for multiple days with temperatures hovering down around minus 30 for longer than I care to recall. It's a real joy to wake up in the morning and realize the feeble space heater in the living room did not manage to keep your bedroom above freezing overnight, the layer of ice in the water glass on the nightstand providing a strong clue the robe and slippers must be donned with lightning speed.

The Younger Daughter called from Arizona to ask how we were coping with the cold. I reminded her that 10 or 20 below at night is nothing. "Don't you remember," I asked, "that it was 30 below in the middle of the day when you were born?" Apparently her memory of the event isn't as clear as mine because, no, she doesn't remember it being super cold when my body finally expelled her. She arrived more than two weeks past the due date. At the time I was sure she'd heard just how cold it was outside and didn't plan to emerge until Spring.

I then reminded her about the Winter in the 1990s, the one where things stayed so cold for so long that I was sure we'd be seeing Frost Giants any time and municipal water lines froze that hadn't frozen since they'd been installed a hundred years earlier. We survived while living in a poorly insulated shoebox of a mobile home. She doesn't remember that one either. She was in Alabama staying with my sister while taking classes at the local community college.

I did tell her that if she's really concerned about her aging parents having to deal with Arctic air her dad and I could always come stay with her until things warm up here. We'd have to be house guests because the Guppy isn't running at the moment. Oddly enough, that's when she changed the subject from fretting about aging parents staying warm to hoping there's not another government shutdown this year because she really doesn't want to sit through another 4-hour staff meeting ever again. 

Major heat wave

Keweenaw Bay, 2014

When I came stumbling downstairs a few minutes ago, it was not quite 18 below outside. Just glanced over at the indoor/outdoor thermometer and it's reading a mere minus 12 and climbing. If it's climbing a degree every two minutes, by the time the sun comes up, it'll be bikini weather.

It has been a warmer than usual winter. I haven't seen it dip below minus 20 at all (yet), and we've had more "thaws" than is typical for the U.P. The local ice fishermen are unhappy because Keweenaw Bay is slow in freezing over. Thin ice has started forming a couple times, but then a strong north wind comes along, breaks it up, and pushes it ashore. This is definitely going to be one of those years where the ice fishermen will be lucky to get in any fishing at all. They had a couple good years; it's time for a winter where all they can do is stand on the shoreline and think bitter thoughts about the money they wasted by building a new fishing shack over the summer or investing in a new canvas shelter. .

The S.O. goes ice fishing with a friend, but he's not a fanatic about it. But then he's not a fanatic about fishing in general. He buys a license every year, but it doesn't get used much even in the summer. If we had to live off the fish he's caught, we'd starve to death pretty quickly.

Cleo has the right idea

The only way she could get closer to the wood stove would be to sprawl right under it. The weather forecast for today is Nasty -- subzero with winds gusting up to 45 mph -- so I don't think either the S.O. or I will be venturing outdoors very much.

I spent most of yesterday down at the museum. I'm trying to get my mess cleaned up so things will be in decent shape when we leave for Missouri. That way the other volunteers won't have anything to worry about or explain away the clutter if a school group or some other organization decides they'd like a tour. I've got three boxes of stuff that I hauled down from the attic left to catalog and about a dozen rolled up maps and blueprints, all stacked on a table in the exhibit area. One box should be fast and easy -- it's small, and it's artifacts. The other two will probably get shuffled to a less conspicuous location. They're packed full of documents, most of which appear to be related to Bernard Lambert's research for his book on Bishop Baraga, Shepherd of the Wilderness (currently out of print, but available from the Baraga County Historical Museum for a mere $15 plus $4 for shipping if anyone's interested; I've found so many copies of the book since I started emptying the attic that we now have at least half a dozen extras). Lambert's papers are going to be a challenge -- hard to classify, but I really dislike the idea of doing an entry in the finding aid that would just say "Miscellaneous research notes" when it looks like they'll fill several document boxes.

What's left in the attic. The pile extends back about 15 feet, maybe a little more,
and includes at least one large steamer trunk. None of the boxes are
labeled, or, if they are, I've discovered the labels rarely match the contents. When
I first started emptying the attic, I thought it would take several years
 to sort and catalog. I haven't revised that estimate much, although
 it is going a little faster than anticipated.
. 

The attic itself is far from empty. I figure I'm maybe at the halfway point, which is moderately amazing considering just how full it was packed. The section shown in the photo is probably the most secure part of the storage area. Although that OSB isn't nailed down it is at least OSB. The first section I emptied did not have a floor, just miscellaneous weirdness like old bulletin boards laid across the joists or nothing at all -- I found a few boxes sitting between the joists directly on the drywall of the ceiling below. The museum was lucky that drywall never started pulling loose.

Coolest thing I've found in the attic recently? A lovely illustrated looking like it's never been read 1885 edition of A Cotter's Saturday Night by Robert Burns, which I wish we didn't have to sell but we probably will. It doesn't really fit into the scope of our museum, so it'll end up with the other used books in the gift shop this summer as well as included with our used books listings on Amazon.com.

In any case, I'll probably be back down at the museum again tomorrow if driving conditions settle down. If it's still windy, though, I'll stay home. Thanks to the wind whipping off the lake yesterday, it was pretty much a total whiteout in Baraga. Pulling out on to a highway frequented by logging trucks can be rather harrowing when your visibility is limited to barely 100 feet. It doesn't help your peace of mind much when you notice there are idiots running around in that mess with their lights off, like the asshat in the jeep who insisted on tailgating me most of the way to Family Dollar. Then again, there's something about driving an SUV that makes people seem to think they're invulnerable. . . but that's a subject for a separate post. Right now it's time to throw another log on the fire.

You'll get used to the cold

Back in the '90s, a popular line of tee-shirts on quite a few college campuses were Top Ten lists.I was reminded of those shirts yesterday when I was getting dressed and one of my souvenir shirts from Virginia Tech made it to the top of the rotation. Obviously inspired by David Letterman's top ten lists, the shirts featured The Top Ten Lies told on particular campuses or in specific programs. There were a few common themes. Every list targeting undergraduates would, for example, include a reference to a local watering hole with an ambiguous name. At Virginia Tech the line was "The Balcony is a theater" while at Michigan Tech it read "I was studying at the Library," both the Balcony and the Library being popular bars in their respective towns (although the Library is a whole lot classier than the Balcony ever aspired to be).

Other popular lies at Michigan Tech included lines like "You can graduate in 4 years" -- an indirect reference to a local slogan: "Michigan Tech, the best 5 or 6 years of your life" -- and "You'll get used to the snow."

Well, maybe a corollary to that would be "You'll get used to the cold." We've been experiencing a bit of a cold snap (a few days in a row with subzero temperatures, both day and night). We heat with wood, (the stove is a Jotul Bear, which I highly recommend to anyone who's stove-shopping), which is great during the day but can be a nuisance at night. The house can get too warm for it to be comfortable for sleeping. This winter I've been urging the S.O. not to stoke the stove too much in the evening. It's too hard to get a good night's sleep if the bedroom is like a sauna, especially when I decided to actually use the flannel sheets this month. I told him it's not that big a deal to wake up to a house that's a little chilly it we're able to sleep better in a cooler bedroom.

The downside to that directive has been evident during the past few mornings. The temperature in the house will drop by ten degrees or more between the time we go to bed and when I get up. I am a morning person, the S.O. most emphatically is not, so I'm the first one down the stairs to start the coffee, feed the cat, and check the woodstove. This morning it was about 5 below outside, and 63 in the house. Yesterday it was 61. As usual for the past couple winters, I'm sitting here in a room where the temperature is now up to about 67 and I'm comfortable in just my nightgown. No robe. Granted, the nightgown is the practical flannel kind (I am a grandmother; I have an image to maintain), but it is short-sleeved.

The first winter we were back from Atlanta, if it dropped much below 70, I'd be bundled up with a long bathrobe/housecoat/whatever made from sweatshirt material on top of the flannel nightie. I'd be pulling on socks before putting on the slippers, and I'd complain about freezing if the indoor thermometer registered below 68. Not anymore. I can't remember the last time I wore the robe, the only thing on my feet are some lightweight knitted slippers, and I'm comfortable. If I were a few years younger, a person might suspect it's not adaptation but hot flashes, but hey, I'm a geezer well past the "Is it warm in here or is it just me?" stage.

So, yes, you actually do get used to the cold.

It's not just St. Louis

They're freaking out here too. I did a post a couple weeks ago about the absurdity of schools and other organizations closing when the temperatures around here dipped below zero. Well, they're doing it again. The predicted high for today is a negative single digit number, wind chills are going to be nasty, and every single school in the western U.P. is closed. Unbelievable. It's cold, but, Christ on the proverbial crutch, it's not snowing. It's not even that windy. The wind indicator on the weather vane in the front yard is just sitting there, and tree tops are barely moving. Dress the little barracudas in their snowmobile suits, wrap scarves around their heads, and shove them out the door. Either that, or resign your collective selves to having school run into July* because there's a limited number of "snow" days allowed, and all the local schools have pretty much burned through the available supply. There is absolutely no reason to freak out when it's a classic and totally normal Upper Michigan January day: cold enough to castrate brass monkeys, but nothing out of the ordinary for this part of the country at this time of the year.

Or at least it didn't used to be out of the ordinary. Apparently now it is. We've had so many warm winters in a row that when we finally get one that behaves like winter did 20 or 30 years ago, no one can handle it. Back in the 19th century, Bishop Baraga wandered all over the U.P. on snowshoes in some truly godawful weather. He survived without Thinsulate or a climate controlled vehicle; it seems like we modern day Yoopers should be able to cope with a little cold now.

You know what my test is for weather that's cold enough to worry about? It's when I step outside, blink, and my eyelashes freeze together. That hasn't happened yet; when it does, maybe I'll agree it actually is cold.

[*I cheerfully predict that the same parents who don't want their kids going to school now because they're terrified of the wind chill number will be raising hell when it gets to be June and the extended school year interferes with family outings or the kids getting summer jobs.]

Snow days? We never had snow days

Got up this morning to below zero temperatures outdoors. According to the indoor/outdoor thermometer, it was minus 13.9 and dropping at 6 a.m. Today's predicted high is slightly warmer; it's supposed to climb all the way up to minus 6. Fahrenheit, of course, I don't want to think about what it would be in Celsius because Celsius always sounds colder.

What intrigues me about this particular cold snap is the way people are reacting to it. Below zero temperatures aren't exactly new here in the U.P. I can recall many winters where the lows would be down around minus 30 or even 40 below, especially toward the end of January and the beginning of February. I can remember waking up one morning at my parents' house, a structure that relied on one pathetic oil-burning space heater to prevent frostbite and hypothermia in its residents, and finding ice had formed in the water glass on the nightstand. And how did we all respond to this bitter cold? We got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, and then headed out the door to walk to school through waist deep snow. Uphill. Both ways.

Well, maybe no waist deep snow and there was a school bus, but nonetheless we went to school. No one panicked because it was, holy fuck, cold. It was northern Wisconsin in the winter. You expected cold, you dealt with it and quietly hoped for an early spring. Didn't matter just how many brass monkeys were shedding testicles, unless that cold was accompanied by blizzard-like snow conditions, you went to school.

Even 20 years ago bitter cold didn't inspire entire states to close their school systems. Back in 1993-1994 we had a record cold winter. Temperatures were minus 20 or colder in the middle of the day for what seemed like weeks on end. Municipal water pipes froze that hadn't frozen since they were put in a hundred years earlier. But people bundled up, kids kept getting on school buses, and life went on.

So what's different this time? Is this yet another phenomenon that we can blame on the Internet and/or social media? Or is it simply the result of the traditional mainstream media flogging a story to death because nothing else has been happening in the world lately and they're tired of talking about the Winter Olympics and Russian homophobia? Why are people freaking out now over single digit below zero temperatures predicted to last for only a couple days when not long ago all it would have merited was parents reminding kids to dress in layers. I don't know. I do know that the local TV station put up a list on Facebook of schools that are closed today, and it seemed to cover just about every district in the Upper Peninsula. Just because Minnesota panicked we're supposed to, too? Unreal.