weather

Where’s winter?

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Unless you didn’t bother to read the name of this blog or think it’s just a catchy title I made up, you realize I live in Maine. Maine is a place that when people think of it, they think lobsters, Stephen King and really cold weather with lots of snow. In my early years in Maine, when I traveled back home regularly just saying I lived in Maine was a conversation starter, starting with the obvious “There are Black folks in Maine” and “Damn, it must be really cold there”.

Well this spring I will be coming up on 8 years since I moved here and I have to tell you, um…its really much colder in Chicago. Seriously. There are only a handful of days each winter that have me putting on the real winter gear. Most days I am fine in a sweater and light coat and long underwear? Shit, I haven’t worn that since I left Chicago.

In fact it seems like every year that I am here, the winters are getting milder…in fact what prompted this discussion is the fact its 2 days after Christmas and it’s almost 50 degrees with rain. Yes, 50 with rain. Um…I told the kids we would go sledding but alas without snow we aren’t sledding anywhere.

Now there are parts of Maine (way up north or in the mountains) where its cold and they have snow and that seems to happen most years. But down on the coast where I live, it’s as if winter decided to take a permanent break. Now some of ya’ll might be asking what is the big deal. Well the longer I live here and the more in tune with nature I become, long story short we need winter so we can have a good spring and summer. So shit can grow and all that other shit. Frankly the natural order of things is screwed up when winter decides to take a break and I find that a tad scary. Now I know some parts of the country have been getting hammered by winter, hell some places recently got snow that never get snow but hey? What about us?

So winter, do you think you can make a return to Maine. See, I have learned to tolerate you and I would rather have you now and not in say April.

Hope everyone had a good holiday!

What’s up with the weather?

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I should get a t-shirt made up “I survived the ice storm of 2008”. The past several days up here in my little corner of the US, the weather has been down right crazy. Now I am from Chicago, so I am used to cold and snow in fact native Mainers always seem a bit bothered that I don’t find winters to be all that taxing up here. Truth is the average winter temperature up here is warmer than Chicago, shit, I grew up back when the wind chill factor used to regularly dip below 0, so in general winter does not faze me. Truth is I will take winter any day over being hot, much to my in-laws annoyance that we will never live near them in Arizona. Shit, that place is hot as hell, might even be hotter.

However last Thursday night the weather decided to throw something new at me and for once I gotta say, yeah the weather up here is wild. We had a ice storm, initially it didn’t seem that impressive until I woke up and friends started calling me on Friday talking about how they had no power. Well our power went out too, but only in brief spurts, seems since I live in town, I am on the same grid as the police and fire department so it explains why our power has never gone out longer than an hour or two…ever.

Well I had no idea how bad it was until the spousal unit got up to get me one of those lovely hot chocolates I love from Starbucks, dude calls me to say sorry babe, Starbucks is closed, no power. Turned out the whole damn town was closed except for a few places, couldn’t even buy water because the store sold out. Now, I am a big city girl but being stuck in my house with a 3 year old going on 17 and no relief in sight is like hell, she wanted to leave the house but the damn traffic signals didn’t work and even the spousal unit who is a proficient driver having learned eons ago in California was like we need to stay in the house.

Sadly, its 5 days later and there are still a number of folks in Maine and New Hampshire who are still sitting in the dark and its snowing today. Of course Monday the temperature hit almost 60… I don’t know about you but something is really strange with the weather these days.

So what’s the weather like where you are? As for me, I am working from home today since I already braved the snow once today for an early morning meeting.