Even the dog is over it

Climate change my ass!

We’ve had weeks of spring, the dog is fully into the quarter’s shedding so his coat is thinning. He looked at the wet snow shifting between rain, hail, sleet, then back to snow.

He looked outside this morning at the accumulated snow then turned around & went back to bed.

This is super annoying! The snow is that wet heavy stuff that’s a pain to clear.

The back deck says it’s 35°F but still it’s snowing & sticking.

On the plus side, thus far it’s not the predicted 18”

On the down side it’s more than the revised prediction of 1”

Now, we’re just waiting for the snow to stop. I’m pretty sure that it’s only going to be myself and the young neighbor at the end of the street doing snow clearing. Everyone else had the good sense to get the hell out of Dodge.

We finally got breaks in snowfall around noon and spent the next 3 hours clearing. I think we got 7-9 inches of snow, which was more than enough. As I mentioned it was the wet heavy snow that is a pain to remove, but which must be removed before it freezes to the pavement.

When I say breaks, it was interesting, There were bands of snow, then periods of sunlight. The temp also started rising so working outside wasn’t to bad either.

Tomorrow there’s supposed to be more snow but the temperatures are supposed to be lower during the night, I’m hoping that means the snow will be light and fluffy.

Later in the week it’s going to be sunny and in the 60s. That’s going to make a really big mess. 

There’s one good thing about this. 

We haven’t had any idiot snow players.

Jesse being outside running around in the snow while I was out clearing the street tired him out he’s snoring on the couch right now while I negotiate with my my aching back about the next move I’m going to make. 

First Snow of the Season

It’s funny. 

Yesterday I was hiking around in 50° F weather. There are even some plants that started blooming again. I was wandering around in a sweatshirt on the hike and even that was too hot.

Today, I got up and there was a little moisture on the deck. But over the past 5 or 10 minutes the snowfall is picking up. Oddly it’s still not that cold. 37°F 

We’re starting to get some accumulation and the snowflakes are big and fluffy. I admit I like snow, I just don’t like 8 feet of snow at a time. I’ve described the snowfall I like as “Decorative” snow.

Jesse is snoozing on the couch, he’s occasionally opening his eyes to check on the snow level out on the deck. He’s happy because he loves playing in the snow.

The weather app is showing decreasing probability of snow throughout the morning. I’m sure there will be enough to make the dog happy.

What remains to be seen is how much snow I’m going to have to clear.

At least the two dead trucks that were parked at the side of the house are gone, so I’ll have more space to pile snow and the winter is like last years.

I’ve got all the window shades up, sitting in the living room, I can be comfortable and enjoy the show.

The house is currently on the transition line between snow and rainy slush. If I look to the front of the house, I see big puffy snowflakes, Looking toward the back of the house there are less, and smaller flakes and more water droplets. 

On the one hand this is pretty cool and interesting on the other hand it means that the snow, when I get around to clearing it will be heavy, wet, and sticky.

When It comes to snow clearing… I prefer dry powder. 

When I first moved here, I had no clue that snow came in different styles. I don’t think I’ve seen all the different types of snow, but I’ve seen a pretty wide variety. I think it’s the Inuit people that have 300 words for snow.  I don’t want to learn all the names, but I understand how you’d get 300 words to describe the various textures.

I like the sound of snow falling. Most of the time folks don’t notice it. But there’s a white noise hiss as the snow hits the ground. For some reason, I’ve always thought it was neat and it’s comforting, like the sound of rain hitting the roof. 

I better fuel up with breakfast. I might have some shoveling to do.

I hope your Saturday is a good one.

We have WIND!

And a lot of it.

There’s a severe weather alert in effect for us. 70 MPH wind gusts are possible. Based on what I’ve been hearing they’re already happening. Technically the worst of it shouldn’t be here until later tonight. The advisories don’t expire until Tuesday.

Great!

Winds this strong can pick up all kinds of crap and throw it.

I’ve already been out this morning, moving things around to secure them. I’ve stacked chairs so that their combined weight should prevent them from blowing off the deck. I’ve tucked the picnic table chairs under the stairs  to keep them in place. Other outdoor / deck things I’ve moved into the basement. 

I’ve got an event to attend this evening so yippee! The freeway will no doubt be a lot of fun. Hopefully I can make it to the venue and back without incident or debris on the road.

I’m thinking the pup will have to be inside, in his crate while I’m gone. He’d probably be okay roaming the house but I’d prefer to come home to things as I left them rather than shredded fabrics or whatever. He’s not done that kind of thing in a very long time, but if he’s bored and I’m gone for hours, he might go down the “Bad Dog” road.

My original plan was to leave him outside. He likes this time of year and often spends the evening surveying the world from his deck until 9:30 PM or so. With the strong winds such as these, a balmy 49°F quickly becomes uncomfortable as heck. 

According to the navigation information I’m going to be spending an hour and a half on the road, there and back. I know approximately where the venue is, I don’t recall it taking that long to get there. But it is in LA County and well,,, I guess that alone explains a bunch of ills.

I haven’t been in LA County for years. Literally! I think the last time I crossed the LA Country line was in 2020. I crossed then, only because I was taking a drive toward Mountain High in the summer. I wanted to get to the peak where it’s possible on a clear day, to see all of the LA Basin and sometimes the ocean.

Actually crossing into the LA Basin is another matter. I think the last time I did that, was in 2018. Going into the LA Basin tonight should be interesting.

It’s strange to me that once LA was someplace that I enjoyed. I worked in the area and there was a lot to do and see. Over time, LA lost its sheen and I became reticent to go into the city, especially if I didn’t have to. In part I chalked it up to not wanting to make the drive, when I didn’t have to make it for work.

The other half used to say, “It’s not that bad…” he’d cajole me then we’d go do something together. I noticed however that in more recent years, even prior to COVID, we’d only do things in the daytime and would be out of LA by early evening.

I thought it was his work schedule, or the distance, or that we were getting older and “Growing Up”. I wonder now if it was all of those things and that we’d seen changes in the city that concerned us on a subconscious level.

During the COVID lockdowns and the “Summer of Love” we watched in horror the events unfolding in LA and in an odd way silently agreed neither of us needed to go to Los Angeles for anything.

So we didn’t, even after the lockdowns ended and things started to return to normal.

We weren’t afraid per se, we just didn’t see any need to expose ourselves to the insanity that LA had become.

It’s amazing how much has changed since I moved to California in 1978. 


Followup 11/20/2023:

Prayers answered about the wind. It died down about 30 minutes before I left home. Jesse got to stay outside where he could run around and not be cooped up “His Room,” meaning his crate.

The expected winds along the South facing foothills also didn’t materialize until well after 9PM. While I was at the venue I checked the conditions and noted that the High Wind Advisory and High Wind Warnings were not being shown on the weather app. Driving home there were a few gusty conditions but nothing like the 70-75MPH winds the warnings all mentioned. I got home about 11pm to find the pup curled comfortably on his outdoor bed sound asleep.

The garage door opening didn’t even rouse him. It was the lights throughout the house, as I was getting out of my suit that caught his attention. He gave me the obligatory sad puppy face (for guilt’s sake) and then spread himself crossways on the bed making sure that I understood for my transgression (of leaving him,) I would have to wrestle my way into the bed, or bribe him.

The dinner was very good. The music was lovely, I’ve always been a sucker for Viola da Gamba. Chatting with the folks at the table was fun and interesting. The talk about Samuel Johnson was also interesting. It had never occurred to me that there would be competition among lexicographers either contemporaries or those separated by time.

I’ve never opened a Johnson Dictionary, I don’t usually like Merriam Webster Dictionaries, (Although due to their ubiquity I seem to find myself using them often.) I’m more of a Funk & Wagnalls kind of guy, I have spent many happy hours wandering through the Oxford English Dictionary , and various other unabridged dictionaries.

I can say that the speaker last night gave me a new appreciation of the dictionary. Now if only more people used a dictionary and the words and meanings contained therein more frequently.

The point of a word is to convey meaning, if a word is disconnected from its commonly accepted definition then meaning is lost. If only one word in a sentence suffers this kind of misuse, the context of the sentence can still allow the reader to glean the meaning intended by the misused word. That ability rapidly degrades if several of the words in the sentence are also ambivalently defined.

There is no better example of this, than Kamala Harris’s famous “word salads”.

I walked away from this event having learned some new things, and heard a number of new words being used conversationally. (NO, Not new dirty words… Dang it!) Even If those new words were being spoken by an attorney.

It’s time for me to be off and continue with my chores around here.

Have a good day.