It's cold out there!
I haven't been on LJ for a fair while--busy with bird counts. I just got the last piece I needed to finish up the data for the Champaign County count, done Dec. 14th.Which went better than I had expected: the weather forcast had been for 3-5 " of snow & what we got was 3+5 = 8"..Still we tallied 65 species, including a Merlin and a very cold pipit. Yesterday I went over to the Illinois River for the annual eagle count: Saw fewer birds than I had expected, given that all the still water was frozen solid so the only open water was on the river itself. However we were apparently too late for the birds that were out hunting in the morning--the lady at a riverfront nature center said that a "whole bunch" had been following a barge earlier. I was accompanied by a fellow from Mumbai experiencing his first Midwest winter. The snow was blowing over the road resulting in near whiteout when something in the other lane (such as a snowplow) came along. He took lots of pictures.
So right now we are in what the weather folk are calling a "polar vortex". It's been snowing all day & the temperature has dropped 17 degrees since this morning. It's supposed to drop another 15 or so degrees overnight, putting us well sub-zero.
Brrrrrr.... OK, I lived in Minnesota for 6 years, so it's not as though I haven't encountered this stuff before, but I've been down here in central Illinois since 1964 & I'm no longer used to it! Oh well, I'll survive, & if I open a faucet a bit, so will my plumbing.
So right now we are in what the weather folk are calling a "polar vortex". It's been snowing all day & the temperature has dropped 17 degrees since this morning. It's supposed to drop another 15 or so degrees overnight, putting us well sub-zero.
Brrrrrr.... OK, I lived in Minnesota for 6 years, so it's not as though I haven't encountered this stuff before, but I've been down here in central Illinois since 1964 & I'm no longer used to it! Oh well, I'll survive, & if I open a faucet a bit, so will my plumbing.