Tag Archives: weather

Indecisive much?

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open-closed2 (1)

With the lives and economic livelihood of 20,000 odd people in your hands, being a decisive leader is clearly important. While I would never criticize those empowered to make difficult and important decisions, I will cheerfully provide you with a timeline of events and let you draw your own conclusions about how the story unfolds.

 

Tuesday, January 21st:
– 7:57PM: Opening is delayed 4 hours. Liberal leave is not in effect.
– 8:02PM: Correction. Liberal leave is in effect.
– 8:44PM: Opening is delayed 2 hours. Liberal leave is in effect for Wednesday, January 21st.
– 8:46PM: Opening is delayed 2 hours. Liberal leave is in effect for Wednesday, January 22nd

Wednesday, January 22nd:
– 5:32AM: Opening is delayed 4 hours. Liberal leave is in effect.

I’m tempted to add an entry for 10:00AM, when I’m projecting someone will make a decision to shut it down for the day, but since that hasn’t happened, I’ll stick to reporting the facts as they happened and let the future tend to itself.

It seems to me that over the course of ten hours, we waffled, vacillated, and ended up more or less right back where we were at around 8PM yesterday. I’m not saying anyone is indecisive much, but the simple facts of the case are what they are.

Winter is coming…

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Sure, technically winter has been here for a while now, but every time snow threatens to come to the mid-Atlantic, it’s like the first time. That’s fun and exciting for about the first 30 seconds. After that it just becomes an enormous pain in the ass.

The predicted weather tomorrow shouldn’t be a factor here at the top of the bay until afternoon, which is both good and bad. It’s good in that I’m not going to stay up way too late tonight in the off chance that tomorrow is a delayed opening. It’s bad in that it’s the first time this season snow may fall while everyone is already at the office and chomping at the bit to get home.

I have what you could call an academic curiosity about what the powers that be at the office will do with mid-day snow. Since we’ve already shown that early morning snow is problematic for the decision-making process, I suppose my only hope is that they’ll be more caffeinated when the time comes to start figuring out what to do with 10,000 odd people all in a hurry to cram themselves through fewer exits than most people have fingers on one hand. Let’s just say that I’m not particularly full of faith. I think the best case scenario tomorrow will be bolting the moment someone says “liberal leave” in the hope of getting clear ahead of the first wave of an exodus.

Forecast for tomorrow: In extremam difficultatem.

Cold, colder, coldest…

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The media have made a great story out of the grave menace to our way of life posed by the Polar Vortex of Doom. Rightly so, I suppose. It is cold out there after all. But there’s gohomearcticyouredrunksomething that’s been nagging at me since the early hours of this morning. I mean aside from vaguely wondering if I shouldn’t have left a faucet running while I was at work.

It was cold last night – somewhere in the low teens when I took the dogs out for last call around 10PM. A little after 6 this morning, I took them out again and discovered that it was still cold. It was still cold to the tune of about 3 degrees. The wind felt like it was blowing at more or less the same speed from more or less the same direction. On both occasions, I was more than well aware that it was, by my own definition, cold as blue hell. However, I can’t say that 3 degrees at 6AM felt substantively colder than 13 degrees at 10PM. This all leads me to believe at some level cold is simply cold.

There’s probably some very scientific method of proving that people sense degrees of coldness in different ways, but based on my purely unscientific experience over the last 24 hours, I’d be hard pressed to confirm that. I’m willing to go ahead and make a concession that I would probably be able to tell -30 from 10, but in a narrower range, it all just feels like worse than average cold to me. Then again, I’m not a devotee of cold weather. At best I consider the cold something to be avoided, hidden from, and beaten back using all the home heating weapons at your disposal… but really, unless I’m going to be stuck in it for hours on end, I don’t need gradations of cold. Unless there’s a tragic accident, I’m not going to be in it long enough to do more than notice that “sweet baby Jesus it’s cold out here.” That makes discussions of cold, colder, and coldest pretty much academic by my standards.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Wasted days. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of snow, but like its liquid counterpart in warm weather, I understand it’s just part of the deal that comes with living in an area that has distinctly different seasons. Snow, however, serves one useful purpose that rain almost never manages to achieve: It can bring the office to a grinding halt as everyone stays off the road in fear of their life. Of course that’s only true when the snow flies on a weekday. When it starts falling before the crack of dawn on a Sunday, well, then it pretty much serves no useful purpose whatsoever. In conclusion, snow should be limited to falling between the hours of 1AM Sunday and noon on Friday. At any other time it’s just a nuisance.

2. Uncle Omar. Last week POTUS took quite a lot of heat in stories involving the White House pulling strings for an uncle who was in the country illegally. At first, I’ll admit that I was part of the chorus. Upon reflection, I put myself in the exalted position of the presidency and one of my own uncles in Omar’s place. In a situation where I wielded supreme executive authority, I’d be hard pressed not to lend a hand where blood is involved. I’m not sure any of the critics are dumb enough to think this is the first president who used the weight of his office to help out friends, family, or significant donors. While I’m not saying it’s “right”, I am saying that it’s human nature. For better or worse, kin is kin.

3. Laying awake. Something has my schedule off… and you can well imagine how happy that makes me. There’s something uniquely unpleasant about lying in bed, staring at the darkness and knowing precious minutes of an already abbreviated night’s sleep are ticking away. Then you read a little. Then you watch some TV. Then suddenly it’s half passed one and your alarm’s going off in three hours. Finally, when sweet, sweet blissful sleep comes, three separate alarm clocks scream to life, dragging you back from your slumber and you spend the rest of the day wanting to punch the world in the face. With a shovel.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Nature. I’ve never made any bones about not being a hippy tree hugger. I like the idea of the outdoors… as long as it’s neat, and orderly. Wandering around in the woods looking for a place to poop isn’t high on my list of things to do without a damned good reason. I like to think of it as the difference between enjoying an English garden and enjoying the rain forest. Both have their role to play in the great scheme of things, but I really only need to be involved with one of them. Being a practical man, I know that I need nature to cooperate with me from time to time, though. Basically, what I need it to do is stop throwing thunderstorms around every afternoon so I can get some stuff done outside. Stupid nature. Why can’t we control that foolishness yet?

2. Lunch. I use to enjoy a wide range of lunch options – assuming you consider a score of fast food joints and gas station sandwich shops different enough to count as “a range.” Part of my furlough survival plan was to reduce the cost of lunch by bring it from home. It doesn’t sound like much at first blush, but $200 odd bucks a month adds up respectably over a few months. Now that I’m bringing chow from home, I’m thoroughly bored with everything. I’m philosophically opposed to being one of those people that brings in home cooked leftovers to reheat for lunch (throwing good food in the microwave is pretty much on step above reheating it on the engine manifold – sure it’s warm, but it probably tastes like ass), the options do tend to dwindle. There are only so many ways to be creative with salads and sandwiches when you don’t run your own deli counter or just happen to keep a lot of exotic ingredients on hand. When this furlough is over, I may never touch finely sliced roast turkey breast again. Ever.

3. Shipping. I’ve never exactly been known for my patience and I’ve been spoiled by features like Amazon Prime that default all of my purchases to 2nd day delivery. For a few dollars more, I can arrange for an item to be at the house in less than 24 hours. That’s the kind of service that makes me happy. Then there are the surprising number of things I order online that don’t have an Amazon Prime-like option for rapid shipping. They want to take my money, wait two or three days, and then get around to shipping my item by standard mail so it will take an extra three or four days to arrive safely on my doorstep. Maybe it’s just me but a seven day interval between flash and bang feels a bit like an eternity. They say patience is a virtue. Apparently “they” are idiots.

Attention citizens…

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Attention Citizens of Maryland,

We live slightly to the south of the 39°43′ N parallel marked by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in 1767. Due to our geographic position in the northern hemisphere, we can, from time to time, expect that frozen precipitation will fall out of the sky and in accordance with the basic laws of physics, come to rest upon the ground. When it occurs in quantity, this natural phenomenon is colloquially know as a “snow storm.” Like its warmer, wetter cousin the “rain storm,” this is a perfectly natural event and tends to occur regularly during the months of December, January, February, and even March.

These storms, particularly the ones that take place late in the season tend largely to be quick hitters – lasting for a day or two at most before melting off because the ambient air temperature is well above freezing. Now I’m not a fancy, big city weather forecaster, but it strikes me that calling for wall-to-wall news coverage of a rainy day seems silly. I’m not sure why doing the same thing for snow is really any different… and yet, somehow, it is obviously considered a completely different animal.

So, my fellow citizens, here’s the thing: If you’re panicking right now, running to the supermarket to stock up on six metric tons of toilet paper, or driving across the state for a snow blower, you’re a moron. Every time there’s snow in the offing, the news gins up video of people lined up buying shovels, ice scrapers, and salt from their local big box store. In my mind, that only begs the question: Who are all these people who up until now have had no need for a shovel or a scraper? I’ve had the same “snow preparedness kit” since I moved into my first “grown up” apartment. Same shovel. Same scraper. No salt (because it’s mostly just a pain in the ass that ends up with more in the house than on the driveway). Is it really possible that so many people have never before had the need for a snow shovel or the means of clearing ice off their windshields. I’m just saying. It’s not like these are items that are consumed in use or their technology is getting better every year, so the one you bought for the last storm will work just fine for this one.

Maybe I’ve missed the point. I suppose if one shovel is good, having three or four must be better. And certainly every vehicle on the road needs half a dozen ice scrapers. I guess I’ve just never caught the bug for panic buying. You’ll eventually use all 300 rolls of Charmin, but running out and picking them up because it’s going to snow is an activity that’s simply lost on me. Still, we’re a mostly free people, so go forth and hoard if that’s what you think needs done in the face of nature’s “wrath.” I’ll be here with my feet up judging you and mocking your all too predictable asshattery.

Kind regards,

Jeff

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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What Annoys Jeff this Week?

It hasn’t been an awful week. Tomorrow is Friday and I’m looking forward to an outstanding three day weekend and even better company. So there’s your silver cloud, now it’s time for the lead lining:

1. Command Decisions. Maybe I shouldn’t complain about the sheet of ice that covered the parking lots and roads at work this morning. The nuckleheads who piled up or ran down into a ravine trying to get to the gate are the ones who have a real gripe. Since all I did was twist the hell out of my back trying to keep my footing when I got out of the truck, I guess I got off easy. Since I didn’t have any trouble on the county roads getting to work, this might just be a case of the better part of valor being the powers that be saying “yeah, we didn’t get a head start on this one, go ahead and delay arrival by an hour.” By then that fine coating of ice would have been melted and a whole lot of property damage and more than a few personal injuries could have been avoided. Seems like it would have been a no brainer.

2. Books. Now that every DVD and CD I own are safely stored and backed up to disk, I’m starting to eye the one last bastion of physical media in the house… The bookshelves that take up an entire wall of my home office. They’re stacked to overflowing with dead tree editions of every book I’ve read over the last 20-odd years. A handful of them, certainly under a hundred titles, have some significant meaning to me and I’d keep the paper copy regardless. For the rest, though, it would be awfully nice to file them away as an ebook to have on hand “just in case” I ever need some factoids about the 1890s oyster harvest in New York Harbor for instance. Sadly, there is apparently no easy or cost effective way to get from paper to electrons in any kind of large volume without taking inordinate amounts of time. As long as it’s cheaper to buy everything over again as a new ebook than it is to copy what I’ve got already, the paper products won’t be flying off the shelves around her.

I usually shoot for three, but like I said, it hasn’t been an awful week. Check back tomorrow, though, because it’s Friday and something is sure to fly off the hinges 30 minutes before quitting time

Voyeuristic tendencies…

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As a kid in Western Maryland, I was no stranger to a heavy duty snowfall. In the winter of 1996 I seem to vaguely remember a storm dropped around three feet of the stuff that closed schools for a week and let me drive my 4-wheeler all over town for shits and grins. What I don’t remember is any television station shifting to wall-to-wall coverage of frozen precipitation falling from the skies for the duration of the storm. Which leads me to wonder, in my most curmudgeonly way, is that a new thing that they’re doing? We barely had CNN back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth. And honestly, I think widely available cable television had only been ‘down the Crick’ for less than a decade. Maybe they did cover it and I was too busy playing in the snow to notice it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we just didn’t make such a big deal out of it.

It’s snowing. We know more or less when it’s going to end. When it does, there will be plows and shoveling and life will get back to some semblance of normal in about 24 hours. I’m not sure what else you really need to know when you can look out your window and be at least as well informed as the local weather guy. I guess I’m just missing the part where it’s really a national Big Deal. Unless it’s about driving up ratings by appealing to America’s insatiable voyeuristic tendencies. In that case, I understand completely.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. If you’re going to run a restaurant equipped with a drive through, I’m going to go ahead and recommend that you not post a sign on the speaker box that says anything like “D-T is closed, please visit the lobby”. Umm… no. I don’t think I will. I wouldn’t have been in the drive through for breakfast if I weren’t already in a hurry to get somewhere else. Let’s face it, if I wanted to get out of the truck, walk inside, and have a meal, I wouldn’t be looking at fast food options. This is America, by God and if I can’t get food through the window of my truck from you, I’m going to drive my lazy ass next door to Burger King. Next time. Because if I don’t have the time to visit your lobby, I definitely don’t have time to sit in two drive through lines in the same morning. I didn’t want your tasty cheese filled McBreakfast Burrito anyway.

2. I know weather prediction is something akin to turning base metal into gold, but when you spend the better part of a day talking about the impending impact of “an Alberta clipper overlaying the area and bringing 1-2 inches of snow,” it only stands to reason that at some point during the night some actual snow might fall at some point during your forecast window. Here’s a helpful hint from your kindly Uncle Jeff… if you walk outside after sunset, look up, and see starts twinkling in the interstellar distance, it’s bloody well not snowing.

3. Picture it, Friday, 3:51 PM. At what point does it go through your head that “hey, this would be a great time to try to get something done.” Here’s a news flash Poindexter, it isn’t. Everyone’s brain is disengaged and they’ve already got one foot out the door. Sure, no one will say that out loud, but that’s what everyone whose inbox “pings” at 3:51 on a Friday is thinking to themselves when it happens. Actually, what they’re thinking isn’t fit to print in this nice, family oriented part of the internet. Rest assured, though Mr. Wants to Get One Last Thing Done on Friday, everyone thinks you’re an asshat.

Four letter word…

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Sure, sure, I know plenty of you out there on the interwebs are enthralled by how wonderful the post-Christmas snow has been. I’m here to tell you that you are, quite simply wrong. It’s cold, it’s wet, and it requires inordinate amounts of effort to move from Point A to Point B. Simply put, snow is just another four letter word. Like most other four letter words, its use is almost always inappropriate. It’s even more inappropriate on days when I’m already off and want to go out and do things and see people. Under the circumstances, snow is pretty much just an enormous pain in the ass with the singular redeeming quality of being kind of pretty.

Like a hot girl with the personality of a water buffalo, sometimes being pretty just isn’t good enough. The frozen nonsense can stop dropping out of the sky any time now.