![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Snow? In MN? In JANUARY????
Jan. 16th, 2011 11:55 amThe next person surprised by that gets a virtual kick in the face, courtesy of me. This is Minnesota. 9 months out of the year, the temperatures are low enough that sap stops running and for at least half of that, we're locked in permafrost with nothing between us and the Arctic Circle except a few stray reindeer.
Let me give you a little history. Growing up in the 70's & 80's, we regularly had shittons of snow, with blowing and drifting and blizzard-like conditions. By the 90's, the weather changed to less snow, more bitter-ass windchills and temperatures so far below freezing that the batteries in cars have been known to freeze solid and if you have a diesel vehicle, you're pretty much fucked until Spring unless you've dumped a can of Kerosene in with your last load of fuel - and even then, you're probably still fucked. Early 2000's, the windchills started becoming less bitter and the last couple winters have been pretty mild.
THIS IS A BAD THING. You know what happens when we have mild winters? The water table drops. Things what lives and breeds in water tend to do less living and breeding. Things which feed on things what lives in water have less to eat so they stop breeding and since those are all predator animals, bunnies eat your garden. There will be a lot of bunnies, because bunnies are stupid and don't care if there's enough food, they just want to get on with their gettin' on and that results in baby bunnies. The water table's low and there's no snow so the frost has sunk deep claws into the ground and created the permafrost situation I mentioned earlier, so plants germinate later and unless there's some freaky business with the jet streams, there's less rain because every living thing is sucking moisture out of the air before it can condense, so all the other plants start dying off, which results in bunnies eating your personally-watered bit of green. While they're doing that, you're being eaten alive by mosquitoes because all the little trickling streams and small lakes turn into stagnant puddles when there's not enough water to keep the streams flowing too fast for mosquito larvae to survive in. Oh, and you're getting sunburned under those mosquito bites, because there'll be less cloud cover and temperatures will be disgustingly hot and humid. There's no such thing as "dry heat" in "The Land of 1000+ Lakes".
We seem to be back on the cycle of getting a decent amount of snow in the winter. THIS IS A GOOD THING. Falling snow releases kinetic energy and warms the ambient air temperature. It insulates the ground. More snow means warmer winter temperatures and a higher water table. We've had only one or two days where the temperature and windchill were so far below zero that eyeballs freeze solid. Plants will germinate earlier and the water table will be high enough that I won't be disappointed when I go to Minnehaha or Gooseberry Falls. There will be less mosquitoes and less bunnies eating your garden. More clouds in summer means lower temperatures. Yes, you have to shovel, unless you own a snowblower or a Yooper Scooper. Personally, I'm laughing at the people whining because they sold their snowblower since they hadn't used it in a couple years. This is Minnesota. One should, by rights, have the snowblower in the garage, tuned and gassed up every year because it's not uncommon for us to get hit with a blizzard around Easter - and because not having one is pretty much tempting fate. Which is probably what happened. Screw this climate change greenhouse-gas cyclical weather pattern crap, it was fate going "Oh. Huh. Hundreds of people in MN got rid of their snowblowers. Time to mess with them."
I can understand people in the Lower 48 pulling a Chicken Little and screaming that the sky is falling, because as far as the know, this frozen white stuff falling from the sky is some new Anthrax popsicle terr'ist bullshit. Minnesotans get no leeway, because they live here and should know better. I'm ok with people stating they hate snow or hate shoveling or hate running a plow on the roads when every stupid person in the world decides to go driving in a blizzard, but the people who are surprised by snow in Minnesota, in winter, especially in January, should shut up and stop showing how they failed grade-school Geography. It's been on the news. Snow in January is not news in this state, unless it is purple or contains the corpses of tiny frozen frogs or something. Sadly, it has not been that interesting, it has just been coming down in a quantity that people have become unaccustomed to.
In other news, having just googled "Can Anthrax be frozen", I probably just put myself on a terr'ist watchlist of some sort. Probably shouldn't amuse me as much as it does.
Let me give you a little history. Growing up in the 70's & 80's, we regularly had shittons of snow, with blowing and drifting and blizzard-like conditions. By the 90's, the weather changed to less snow, more bitter-ass windchills and temperatures so far below freezing that the batteries in cars have been known to freeze solid and if you have a diesel vehicle, you're pretty much fucked until Spring unless you've dumped a can of Kerosene in with your last load of fuel - and even then, you're probably still fucked. Early 2000's, the windchills started becoming less bitter and the last couple winters have been pretty mild.
THIS IS A BAD THING. You know what happens when we have mild winters? The water table drops. Things what lives and breeds in water tend to do less living and breeding. Things which feed on things what lives in water have less to eat so they stop breeding and since those are all predator animals, bunnies eat your garden. There will be a lot of bunnies, because bunnies are stupid and don't care if there's enough food, they just want to get on with their gettin' on and that results in baby bunnies. The water table's low and there's no snow so the frost has sunk deep claws into the ground and created the permafrost situation I mentioned earlier, so plants germinate later and unless there's some freaky business with the jet streams, there's less rain because every living thing is sucking moisture out of the air before it can condense, so all the other plants start dying off, which results in bunnies eating your personally-watered bit of green. While they're doing that, you're being eaten alive by mosquitoes because all the little trickling streams and small lakes turn into stagnant puddles when there's not enough water to keep the streams flowing too fast for mosquito larvae to survive in. Oh, and you're getting sunburned under those mosquito bites, because there'll be less cloud cover and temperatures will be disgustingly hot and humid. There's no such thing as "dry heat" in "The Land of 1000+ Lakes".
We seem to be back on the cycle of getting a decent amount of snow in the winter. THIS IS A GOOD THING. Falling snow releases kinetic energy and warms the ambient air temperature. It insulates the ground. More snow means warmer winter temperatures and a higher water table. We've had only one or two days where the temperature and windchill were so far below zero that eyeballs freeze solid. Plants will germinate earlier and the water table will be high enough that I won't be disappointed when I go to Minnehaha or Gooseberry Falls. There will be less mosquitoes and less bunnies eating your garden. More clouds in summer means lower temperatures. Yes, you have to shovel, unless you own a snowblower or a Yooper Scooper. Personally, I'm laughing at the people whining because they sold their snowblower since they hadn't used it in a couple years. This is Minnesota. One should, by rights, have the snowblower in the garage, tuned and gassed up every year because it's not uncommon for us to get hit with a blizzard around Easter - and because not having one is pretty much tempting fate. Which is probably what happened. Screw this climate change greenhouse-gas cyclical weather pattern crap, it was fate going "Oh. Huh. Hundreds of people in MN got rid of their snowblowers. Time to mess with them."
I can understand people in the Lower 48 pulling a Chicken Little and screaming that the sky is falling, because as far as the know, this frozen white stuff falling from the sky is some new Anthrax popsicle terr'ist bullshit. Minnesotans get no leeway, because they live here and should know better. I'm ok with people stating they hate snow or hate shoveling or hate running a plow on the roads when every stupid person in the world decides to go driving in a blizzard, but the people who are surprised by snow in Minnesota, in winter, especially in January, should shut up and stop showing how they failed grade-school Geography. It's been on the news. Snow in January is not news in this state, unless it is purple or contains the corpses of tiny frozen frogs or something. Sadly, it has not been that interesting, it has just been coming down in a quantity that people have become unaccustomed to.
In other news, having just googled "Can Anthrax be frozen", I probably just put myself on a terr'ist watchlist of some sort. Probably shouldn't amuse me as much as it does.
