New York City Rediscovers Winter,And Not Everybody Is Happy About It

This screen grab of a New York City webcam on Friday 
looked peaceful enough, but some New Yorkers are 
not handling the toughest winter in recent memory
very well. It gets very cold again this weekend. 

Snow and winter cold that just won't go away is driving some New Yorkers batty. 

As many of us know, almost a foot snow and sleet fell on New York City back on January 25 and it has just sat there. Stubbornly. Daring for people to say mean things about it as it turns gray, yellow, slushy and gross. 

Mean things are also being said about the air temperatures, which has been consistently colder than it's been in yeats. 

And those mean things are being said. 

Egged on by the New York Post, a right wing, Murdoch owned publication, New Yorkers, mostly of MAGA ilk are enraged that snow is still narrowing sidewalks, making parking difficult and is just plain nasty to look at, now that it's been sitting around getting dirty for more than a week.

Trash bags are still out there too, as the sanitation department focused on clearing snow, so some trash pickups were delayed.

All that snow I'm sure is frustrating to New Yorkers. But it's mostly really about the Post and MAGA trying to do anything to take leftie Mayor Zohran Mamdani down a peg. Because he's - gasp! a democratic socialist. 

Hizzoner probably hasn't done a perfect job with this winter storm. No mayor would. But from my vantage point, he's done pretty well from what I can see. But what do I know? I'm just a hick from Vermont who has plenty of room to throw snow out of the way if I need to. 

The complaints seem to center on the fact that in past big storms the snow disappeared from the streets pretty quickly after big storms. 

Which is true. 

But the whiners don't seem to understand the concept of thawing. 

The temperature in New York has remained near or below freezing since the storm hit on January 25 and 26. Most past storms featured warmer, thawing weather right after the storm.

The complainers point to a 27 inch blizzard on January 23, 2016. That one was more than twice as deep as this year's snowfall, but it disappeared fairly quickly. It was above freezing in New York every day after that snowstorm. It was 47 degrees on January 27, 56 degrees on January 31 and a toasty 60 on February 1

Snow depth fell to just six inches within a week after the storm. By February 2, only a trace remained. 

It's not like everybody is complaining. A lot of New Yorkers just say fughetaboutit

On Threads, a New Yorker very reasonably wrote: "All these people talking about yellow snow and dirty snow. Garbage piled up. This is how it has always been after a snowstorm. For decades. It doesn't make it right. It just makes it true. Don't blame Mamdani. Don't blame the MTA. Understand that it takes time to remove snow in a city this size."

Other people got deliciously sarcastic on line:

"After TWO WEEKS there's STILL snow in Central Park, New York City! When will Mamdani get rid of it! Another epic fail!" 

The writer made clear this was indeed sarcasm, so other people mockingly piled on poor Mayor Mamdani. 

"Why hasn't Mamdani made the temperature go above 40 degrees yet?"

"And when will that monster finally put the leaves back on the trees?"

"Socialism brings snow. Why do you think Russia has so much snow?"

"Snow never existed before he was mayor. He cast a spell to create this thing called snow."

"Wasn't he to blame for the blizzard of '96?"

Mamdani was four years old when the blizzard of 1996, so it of course makes perfect sense that this notorious storm was his fault. 

CLEANUP CONTINUES

 New York has alternate side parking rules in which people need to park on one side of the street some days, and other side on different days. This allows for street cleaning.

The city suspended the rules after the big snowstorm on January 25-26. But the suspension ends on Super Bowl Sunday - this weekend -  and quite a few cars are buried under snow and ice. Those buried cars will need to be moved by then, or there will be towing and serious expenses for those car owners. 

It was fairly mild by this winters standards in New York Thursday and Friday which softened the ice encasing the cars a little. That was everybody's last chance to dig out their vehicles. With another intense blast of Arctic cold surging into New York, the ice around those cars is no doubt hard as concrete again. Good luck getting rid of that.   

I'm sure there will be plenty more whining when the expensive parking tickets and towing hit on Monday. 

NO FERRIES

Ferry service on the Hudson and East Rivers have been suspended for a week and that's not going to change anytime soon.  So much ice has built up around Manhattan island that it's too unsafe for ferries to operate.

The ice diminished around Manhattan this week, but it's still there. And those frigid conditions forecast for the weekend mean that you're not going to take the famous Staten Island Ferry or any other ferries for awhile yet if you're around New York. 

At least New York is in for a minor break, anyway. After this cold snap clears out, daytime temperatures most of this week will be in the 30s. 

On Our Anniversary, Thanking A Patient Husband For Enduring Weather Geekdom

My husband Jeff enjoying the weather on our deck
in a photo taken a few years ago. It's our wedding
anniversary today, and I'm celebrating the fact
he's tolerated my weather obsession all these years.

Today is my 11th wedding anniversary (Gawd time flies!) and I'm using the occasion to profusely thank my husband for enduring all these years of weather geekdom.  

By extension, I'm also thanking all the spouses and partners of meteorologists and weather enthusiasts out there for supporting or at least putting up with all that weather talk,

My husband Jeff has tolerated the combination of ADHD and weather obsession for so long now, and he still finds it in himself to stay cheerful. 

We might be talking about, say, whether we need to put our dog Jackson in the kennel when we're away the following weekend, then, SQUIRREL!!!!!

Thunder rumbles in the distance.  My favorite kind of weather! Do I go to the window? Is it a big storm? Do I get in the truck and chase the storm down for photos and video?  Off I go, leaving Jeff wondering about dinner. And probably a lot of other things. 

Or, at night, Jeff's trying to watch "Death In Paradise," or one of those other murder mystery shows he likes. I'm sitting on the couch, scrolling social media because there's an impressive tornado outbreak going on in Texas.

Storm chasers are posting amazing photos and short videos of the twisters. So every five seconds, I push the phone in his face to share how gobsmacked I am by the photo of the tornado sending an entire barn into oblivion. Which means Jeff never does learn who killed the book author on that night's episode of "Death In Paradise."

Jeff respects science, but he is not a scientist. Somehow, however, he survives my detailed explanations of a Quasi-Linear Convective Systems and baroclinic zones without fully allowing me to see how badly his eyes are glazing over.

Jeff is a scenic set designer and a painter. He likes doing things big, so he's produced some marvelous large paintings.

Years ago, we were all sick and tired of this huge ugly painting of an owl that was gradually falling apart on my mother's living room wall.

As a gift, he produced this wonderful large painting of what appeared to be a park in September. A few of the trees in the landscape were starting to turn color, but most were still green. He created a blue sky with beautiful puffy clouds and he made the atmosphere look a bit hazy. Just a stunning piece of art. 

And how did I react to this work?  I gave a weather synopsis of what's going on in the painting. I concluded it was a warm, and somewhat humid September day, and a cold front was approaching that would give us the first taste of real autumn chill in the next couple of days. 

Yeah, I came up with that whole weather forecast. About a painting. Jeff just said, "Yes, dear."

The good news, of course is that my mother loved that painting for years until she passed away in 2022.

I also always congratulate Jeff on the accuracy of his clouds within his paintings. He likes to include expanses of sky in his landscapes.  The clouds in his paintings all look plausible. They could happen in real life. 

Which is great, because it drives me crazy to see some paintings that includes clouds that are meteorologically impossible.  Yeah, Jeff has to tolerate that obsession, too. But maybe there's a bit of a closet weather geek within him, since he knows what clouds look like and sort of how they form. 

Jeff does seem to like the gardens I've created around our house, which of course are weather dependent. He's gotten interested in how the weather helps or hurts the perennial gardens.  So maybe a little of me rubbed off on him, who knows?

So, we have had 11 years of marriage through literally all kinds of weather, and we were together a couple years before we married.

I think the weather gods are smiling on our marriage, too. From day one, actually.  Our wedding day was gorgeous. Obsessed as I am, I looked up the specifics this morning. The high that day, August 26, 2012 was 87, the low was 68 and it was mostly sunny and just a bit hazy, like in Jeff's paintings.  

They say that marriage is a path of enduring sunny bliss interrupted by the occasional storm. With Jeff, all my storm chasing seems to be actual, meteorological storms. He never creates metaphorical ones in our lives, another thing that makes me eternally grateful for Jeff.

Here's one forecast I know will be accurate:  A happy anniversary warning is in effect for Jeff. There's a 100 percent chance that I will always love him as intensely as I ever have if not more.  The love raining down will mix with, laughter, respect, awe and pride toward the man I married.  Accumulations of happy memories with him will be deep. 

The "weather pattern" that is the my joy of being married to Jeff will never change. Happy Anniversary, Chief! 

 

A Welcome Weather Alert: Vermont Now Under A Severe Daffodil Warning

Here's one example of the type of "hazard" that could
develop in Vermont during the upcoming week. 

 It's Easter, I'm feeling whimsical, so I'm going to issue a weather warning not necessarily sanctioned by the National Weather Service office in South Burlington. Or any NWS office, for that matter. 

Still, it needs to be worded like a real National Weather Service warning, so here goes: 

DAFFODIL WARNING NOW IN EFFECT FOR VERMONT

The Matt's Weather Rapport Service in St. Albans, Vermont  has issued a severe daffodil warning for all of Vermont beginning today and lasting through at least this week. 

Isolated daffodils have already bloomed in some cold-protected, sunny corners in Vermont valleys. We also have widespread reports of daffodil flower buds.

This is an extremely welcome warning and you are in a life-improving situation! 

HAZARD TYPE: Daffodils, likely mixed with crocuses and eventually forsythia. Rising temperatures this week in Vermont, which could go as high as the 70s toward the end of the week, will encourage these blooms. 

TIMING: Daffodil blooms will spread across the state during the upcoming week as temperatures warm to above seasonal levels. Warmer valleys will see impacts first, starting mostly on Monday and Tuesday and increasing during the week. Daffodil blooms will gradually spread to higher elevations and the Northeast Kingdom late in the week or next week. 

IMPACTS: Daffodil blooms will cause increased levels of joy and the sense that spring is finally here. Motorists should try not to be distracted by roadside daffodils and perennial gardens brimming with the blooms in front of homes. 

Daffodil warnings will continue at least through this week.

When it's safe to do so, feel free to take photos and selfies with the daffodils. 

If there are many blooms that have accumulated on your own property, it is OK to take some indoors for spring bouquets. 

Considerable amounts of sunshine likely during the warning period are likely to make the beauty of the blooms more intense, so caution is advised. 

Additionally, crocuses have already developed and will continue to increase through the week. It's also likely forsythia blooms will mix with the daffodils, especially later in the week. While not an immediate threat, hyacinth and tulip blooms could also develop during later parts of the warning period. 

Residents are advised to stay near perennial gardens for further updates and warnings. 

Longer range forecasts indicate the daffodil warning will likely need to be extended beyond this week. There are growing signs that Vermont will also see an increasing risk of lilac blooms later this spring. Now is the time to start preparing for such a hazard. 

Stumpy The Cherry Tree Delights Visitors; But Might Have A Grim Future

Stumpy, a struggling cherry tree along Washington DC's 
Tidal Basin, has become a fan favorite, despite, or maybe
because of its distressed look. Photo by 
Kevin Ambrose. 

 Every year, thousands, perhaps millions of visitors descend on Washington DC for the annual blooming of the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin.   

All reports are this year's display was lovely, despite a freeze that threatened things briefly around March 19 and 20.

It all ended well, though, including for Stumpy, perhaps the favorite of all the cherry trees in Washington.

To be clear, as the Washington Post notes, Stumpy is not the world's prettiest flowering tree. Far from it. 

It's the springtime equivalent of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

As WaPo describes it:

Stumpy the cherry tree is struggling
because of salt water flooding from the Tidal
Basin.  Climate change and rising sea levels
could cripple other cherry trees. 

"Stumpy is a hollow, stump-shaped cherry tree located on the south bank of the Tidal Basin in Washington. It has a strip of bark on one side that transports nutrients to a few small branches sprouting from its top. 

Throughout the year, Stumpy's roots are flooded with brackish water from flooding tides of the Potomac River, which is harmful to its health. Yet, the tree survives year after year, bursting with blossoms each spring." 

During peak bloom last week, people waited in long lines to be photographed or take selfies with Stumpy. 

Stumpy actually looked a little healthier this year than in previous years. Its main branch has grown enough to frame the Washington Monument if you take a photo from a low angle, notes photographer Kevin Ambrose, who wrote the piece in WaPo.

As goofy and fun as Stumpy's story is, it does signal a potential looming danger. As noted, cherry trees don't do well at all if their roots are exposed to salty water.   Due to climate change, the water in the Tidal Basin will tend to rise and flood more frequently in the coming years and decades.

Since so many of the cherry trees are along the Tidal Basin, climate change could threaten the annual spring spectacle of those flowering trees. 

Toronto Panda Enjoys, Destroys A Snowman, And Makes Us All Feel Good

A panda in Toronto hilariously dismantles a snowman.

A Toronto, Canada panda bear is making us all smile. 

In the video, we find that zookeepers have built a snowman for our friendly panda, named Da Mao. The snowman doesn't last particularly long, but the fun surely does!   

The video was actually taken at least five years ago, but it has gotten renewed attention lately on social media. Mostly because we need something to give us joy these days. 

The video will definitely fill you with joy, I'm sure as it did me. Maybe it's a lesson on how we all should live - goofy as a panda 

Here it is: As always, click on the video to make it bigger and easier to see