Snow bird (not)

[altivo]

This young red-tailed hawk showed up in the back yard around breakfast time. He looked very bedraggled resting there in the maple tree. If you click on the thumbnail to get the larger view, it will be easier to see him, just left of center.

The promised snow did indeed arrive here, and we ended up with something like 15 inches on the ground, plus serious drifting. Chicago and the suburbs just north of it along the lake shore did in fact get 20 inches or more, right within the range predicted. In the end, it came in as the third largest snowstorm in terms of accumulation since recordkeeping began in 1886. The other two larger ones were 1967 (23 in.) and 1999 (21 in.) If you click on the thumbnail and then progress through the "newer" photos using the button that appears at the top right, you'll see a selection of snow photos.

So the NWS is vindicated this time, and those right wing idiots who made utterly moronic comments on Tom Skilling's column are shown to be the fools they really are. "Science is worthless" indeed.

Work was closed today following as usual the example of the Harvard public school district. However, the schools are going to be closed again tomorrow (probably due to the intense cold expected) and I have no instruction that the library is to be closed. I imagine we'll be open so I have to go into work in the morning. Thank goodness it's just a half day.

We spent the entire day digging out. Thankful that we have a heavy duty snow blower that Gary had tuned up and made ready this year. It's an old Ariens that he has had since before he knew me, and it works like a real draft horse, just keeps going and going. He cut paths between the barns, and cleared out the drive from the house to the road. I shoveled the snow plow leavings (three feet high) out of the mouth of the drive by hand, also exposing the mailbox once more so we can get mail tomorrow (if the post office comes back to life, it was closed today.) We did not swim through the drifts back to the pasture to see what had happened out there, though it might have been an interesting photo of a sea of white waves. Also we had to shovel snow away from doors in order to open them. Barn doors were buried to a depth of two feet or more. Some drifts against the sides of buildings were six feet high. Tess and the sheep stayed indoors, but we did let the boys out to play in the snow once we managed to dig their stall doors free. It was not terribly cold (about 20F) and the wind died down early. Sun came out in the afternoon, and I actually worked up a sweat shoveling and mucking stalls. Unfortunately that isn't supposed to last. Tonight's predicted low temperature is a frigid -17F (-27C) and tomorrow's high will be only 7F. Wind chills as low as -31F (-35C) are predicted. Note how the two temperature scales are converging down there. At -40, Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same. Coincidentally, that's the freezing point of liquid mercury.

Need to go to bed so I can be stiff and sore tomorrow... No weaving was accomplished, despite my imaginings last night that I'd be able to weave all day.

Comments

[hrrunka]

A tough time for wildlife, I guess. The snowdrift is quite impressive.

[altivo]

The birds are quite happy with our feeders. I'm concerned about that fox though. So far haven't been able to get back to where I think she's denned up to see if she's been in and out. We should get that far today though, since I'm not going in to work and Gary's school has shut down again. My boss called just before I'd have left this morning to tell me that the road between here and work is closed by drifting snow and stranded vehicles. I could take an alternate route, much longer, but she said not to come in.

[hrrunka]

Aye, the foxes round my place had a hard time in the snow we had. Judging by the attention they gave my frozen pond, finding water to drink was one of their chief problems.

[altivo]

Well in this case dying of thirst seems unlikely, though eating snow will lower internal body temperature and that's potentially risky after a while. Food is going to be the issue with snow cover in the 40 cm range. All the common prey are well tunneled into that at this point.

[avon_deer.livejournal.com]

"Science is worthless?!"

[altivo]

Yeah, it was a series of those moronic comments that people post to newspaper websites. The Chicago Tribune had an interview with WGN chief meteorologist prior to the storm in which he insisted that it was a real event, genuinely dangerous, and that people should be prepared. The public comments were full of right wing moronic idiocy that essentially claimed the storm was a lie, or a liberal conspiracy of some sort, and that even if it did hit it would just prove that global warming is a lie, and anyway, all of science is bullshit and no one should pay attention to it.

Such attitudes are far more common in the US than they should be. Our educational system has utterly failed us. The majority of US adults do not believe in evolution, for instance. They reject large portions of medical knowledge, deny astrophysics and quantum physics, and are generally on the level of 19th century uneducated folk who refused to believe that the telegraph, telephone, or radio communication were real and insisted that it was all a hoax. They are easy targets for the kind of bullshit that populist politicians like Sarah Palin spout continuously.