A Weather Report

Let's talk about the weather.

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
An unseasonably warm day with some rain. I was worried about going on a run due to ice, but my concerns were unfounded. All the ice had melted and the air temperature was bordering on something I would describe as warm. This was a pleasant surprise and my run went very well. It was worrisome only in that it made me think about global warming.

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
The temperature drops dramatically. I'm very cold. It snows. (Have you ever had to explain to a non english-speaker what the "it" is in "it snows"? That's got to be awfully confusing.)

Thursday, January 31st, 2008
It is windy. Windy like big bad wolf will blow your house down. Windy like wakes me up in the middle of the night and is too loud for me to fall back asleep. Windy like 30 miles per hour windy.

Friday, February 1st, 2008
This one's the kicker. Something is falling out of the sky. The molecule that is falling is without a doubt water, but I hesitate to call it that for fear of offending it and making it angrier. This version of H2O is awe inspiring. It makes me think of that whole chapter in Biology class that was devoted to water and its properties. Let me attempt to describe this precipitation. To expose ones skin is to feel it as hail and I suspect that's what the weather people are calling it. To expose cotton clothing is to experience it as rain, for it soaks through clothing. To drive over it is not recommended. I was fishtailing at 30mph on a very gradual curve. If I had to guess I would say that the structure of the precipitation is ice coated and bound by a layer of semi-liquid water. It wets anything dry that it hits, it chills anything wet that it hits, and it attaches to anything wet and cold that it hits. It has properties of multiple different types of snowballs, but I could not identify it from this list.

When I finished my run I found that my shorts were frozen and stiff, not so bad that I could snap off a piece of fabric like a wafer, but headed in that direction.