A tad chilly

Well, you've got fire season to look forward to down the road . . .

It's raining, It's raining cats and dogs. It's getting warmer, YaY!

The Weatherman was right. So no Snowman as there is no snow.  YAY!

What today's stylish Portlanders are wearing:

goldendog will need four of those for sure.

I remember being in New York with a guy from Spokane. Someone asked us where we were from, and my friend said, "I'm from out West." The New Yorker said, "Oh, you mean like Syracuse?"

Uhhh, yeah... and who do you think gets the blame for every brushfire and backyard Bar-B-Que mishap when that happens? Where is the presumption of innocence that every human wants for himself but is disinclined to extend to anyone else? Just two weeks ago a firebug torched 60+ cars around the LA - Hollywood area and the first APB was for a large green winged creature with a skin condition that looked like scales!! It turns out the pyro was HUMAN, a German national whack job with mother issues. Go figure.  >:[ 

One of the common pet peeves here in the Upper Peninsula is that a lot of people in the lower peninsula refer to a large chunk of the lower peninsula as "northern Michigan".  This map of "Michigan" and the labeled regions (from Wikipedia, for Pete's sake) pretty much sum up how the lower flatlands denizens envision the entire state.  That's the entire map.  Notice anything missing?

The city of Grayling (which is 100 miles south of the U.P.) calls itself "The Heart of Northern Michigan".  Grayling is located at almost exactly the mid-latitude between the northernmost and southernmost points of Michigan, and it's a 400 mile drive from Grayling to the northernmost point.

Most of you might not be very familiar with the relative sizes, so it's maybe worth mentioning that the portion of Michigan that gets omitted (the Upper Peninsula) is longer from west to east than the lower peninsula is from north to south, so it's not like it's a tiny piece of land being overlooked.  

Did you know that Clare is the "gateway to the north?"

I just got done catching up on some of my stats and plots.  All temperatures are Fahrenheit.

Although there have been a few cold days (I had another frozen kitchen pipe battle just a couple nights ago), this winter has been remarkably warm here.  Every single month from September onward has had a substantially below normal heating degree days total.

Looking at the individual days, and using the daily midpoint as the "average" (as done with traditional HDD), only 8 days since November 1st have been more than 5 degrees below the historic average for the date.  A whopping 61 days have been more than 5 degrees above the historic average.  For the past 5.5 months the average daily deviation from "normal" is +6.95 degrees.

There's barely any snow on the ground.  It's 33 degrees right now, and the next five straight days are all forecast to have highs above freezing.

Total seasonal snowfall to date for the Soo is only 54.6 inches.  The average by this date is 93.9 inches.

 It looks like you had another frozen waterpipe you neglected to mention.  Just as well, I suppose.

We learn to hold it in until spring. 

This was a pretty decent snow storm for March.  Last evening between sunset and midnight I got more than a foot of very sticky snow, with a few more inches falling through the rest of the night.  You can see in these photos that the snow was sticky enough that sustained winds of 20mph during most of the night didn't dislodge much from trees or stacked mounds.  Amazingly, considering how heavy the trees and lines are, I didn't lose power (yet).  There were outages elsewhere in the region.  As of mid afternoon there hasn't been any attempt to plow out the streets, so there must be a lot of areas that power crews can't access if something does collapase or blow down.

There's been a bit more snow today, and perhaps still a few more inches to come, but the next major phase is a 35 degree temperature plunge expected to start late this afternoon.

I took these photos right around sunrise, though there's been no direct sunlight today.  Everything in sight really did look as color washed as in the pics.

Wow, impressive.  Last weekend there was a good dump here, but it's still too cold for a snowfall like that.

 Yes, indeed!

Such well cleared streets!  Must be nice. 

(-19.1) F here the night before last (-28 C).

Wow, we're in the -5°C to -10°C range, but lots of snow over the last 48 hours.

Sheesh-- from (-19) F a couple nights ago to +55 F now at noon.

That got me to thinking about the jet stream and this is what I came across.

I opened 2 windows an hour or so ago, for the first time in months.  It's 60 F right now.  The normal high for this date is 33 F.