The White Stuff
As broadcast this morning on my way to work at 8am:
"The good news is that the air is barely moving, so we have no appreciable wind chill. The bad news is that it's currently negative seven degrees [Fahrenheit] without the wind chill."
Yeah, it's cold. We've barely gotten a break since the last Packer game when Fox demonstrated that even Alaska was appreciably warmer than Green Bay right now or, as our Chamber of Commerce president put it, gave the impression that we're within a dog-sled trip of the north pole.
The cold, on its own, really isn't the problem. People here apparently do know how to deal with cold. But without even the occasional warm day, the snow doesn't melt. The problems isn't heavy snowfalls, which we really haven't gotten a lot of, but rather snow accumulation. Of course the cities all plow the roads, but now they're having to plow the snow piles so we can see around corners. Heavy machinery and dump trucks started sneaking out about a week ago to start scooping the snow up and dumping it elsewhere. (I want to know where those dump sites are, and I want a sled.) They're having to dig out the fire hydrants. When I went voting Tuesday at the local high school, traversing it's driveways felt like doing the trench run in Star Wars. When an SUV ahead would turn a corner, it would immediately disappear from sight behind the snow piles.
For pictures, please check them out here: http://xark.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/the-white-stuff.html