Perpetual Ruminations

More or Less, What Will The Weather Bring?

Is this the calm before the storm? It's warm out tonight, no wind, and the moon is shining through a light haze, making a halo effect in the night sky. The temperature has slowly increased through the day and into the night, with midnight being our high. Then, by seven tomorrow morning, the temps will have dropped by ten degrees and the winds will be blowing at twenty miles per hour. By five o'clock in the morning, we'll have a ten percent chance for light snow, but by seven it will increase to sixty percent and climb to one hundred percent in the next two hours and hold there until afternoon while the temperature continues to drop and the winds continue to increase; they are predicting gusts in excess of fifty miles per hour tomorrow afternoon. The temperature will drop through Christmas Eve morning, with a low of negative eleven. According to the forecast, we will get a nice coating of ice before the snow starts and see up to five inches by the time it stops.

We are pretty well settled in for the storm with plenty of food on hand and no plans to go anyplace except for my poor wife who has to work tomorrow. She'll be driving in about the time it hits, so hopefully, we don't get the ice. She will have to drive home about the time it's supposed to start letting up, but with five inches of powdery snow and fifty plus mile per hour winds, it's going to be wicked. If the storm hits as predicted, I may just have to drive her in and go get her, since she hates driving in these conditions.

My biggest concern is that the power may go out. Since we moved here in June, we have noticed that anytime we get high winds, the power tends to go out. They are quick to get it back on, but with a winter storm, it could take longer. We have electric heat and our stove is also electric, so we don't do well without power. If needed, I can bring our camp stove in from the garage, it works on propane, but then we need to be cautious of carbon monoxide and make sure we keep the house vented. In the summer, this isn't a problem, but with temperatures dropping below zero, it becomes a problem. Oh, and I already have an indoor propane heater for my fish shelter that we can use to keep it warm if we lose power.

Now, we wait and see what tomorrow will bring us. It's been my observation that the storm predictions are incorrect, we either get far less or far more. So far, since we moved, it has been far less when it's come to bad weather, sooner or later, however, that's going to change. No matter what, it's going to get very cold.