We've got another big, scary storm heading right toward us. They're calling this one Frankenstorm. (Thanks be, we've moved on from the obnoxious "(
insert weather word)-pocalypse.") It's part Hurricane Sandy, part Nor'easter, and part Jet Stream. A PERFECT bad storm. No snow yet (we hope), just high winds and 12-15 inches of rain. Trees & branches downed, flooding, power outages....the usual. I'm boiling all my eggs today in case we have another 6 or so days without power as we did the last time. I have a gas stove, but it's modern in the sense that it makes a bunch of sparks to light itself--requiring electricity. Can't just swipe a farmer match on the seat of my jeans to get this one going.
Having grown up in Fargo, North Dakota, my one reaction to Fargo's most severe weather, a blizzard--buckets of snow accompanied by howling wind as it blasted through the weather stripping upstairs--was "Goody! No school!!" After breakfast (usually oatmeal or, bliss! cream of wheat--there also was chocolate-flavored malt-o-meal, but mom wouldn't spring for that), we kids all struggled into layers of our warmest clothing: underwear, long brown cotton stockings, long pants, long-sleeved t-shirts, a sweater or two, shoes, heavy wool socks over our shoes, topped off by a snowsuit (jacket & pants), rubber boots, gloves, mittens over the gloves, a woolen hat (usually knitted, but sometimes a matching hat sold with the snowsuit, and long wool scarves wrapped around our necks and faces (below & above the eyes). And then
we went outside to play in the raging storm. We dug forts in the piles of snow lining the sidewalks, made snow angels. The snow was too cold and dry to stick together, so we usually didn't try to make snowmen or snowballs.
Need I say this was
before television came to Fargo. After TV arrived, when I was in the middle of high school, we went skating on bad weather days. Digging in the snow was for little kids, not us.
I don't know what kids do now during bad weather days, but I suspect it's what they do most of the time anyway--call their pals on their cell phones. But if the power is out, how do they charge them? And how will the networks work? What I'll have to do is take my laptop downtown, where all the power lines are buried, sign on at some free WIFI place, like Starbutts, and charge my cell from the laptop.
Weather still has the upper hand, no matter what the season.
Sky Tracker:
Look at all the water and wind in the sky at 10:30 a.m.! It feels muggy outside, too.
Same views, 3 p.m.
