To look out the window, it's a beautiful day. Blue sky, sunny, low 50s. And yet days like today make me surlier than any other kind of weather. Cold you can dress up for. Heat can be mitigated by shade and a cool drink. Rain can be kept off by sitting under the roof overhang.
But there's absolutely no way to sit comfortably outside with a book and a smoke when the wind has been howling off the lake at a steady 20mph for three hours straight. You don't even worry about having your hair mussed when the occasional 40mph gust is snatching the hat from your head and playing hob with the patio furniture.
UPDATE: 4:10PM. Still blowing. It's the relentless, water-torture nature of it that gets to me.
UPDATE: 6:40PM. Still blowing. I may have mentioned that I live on the second floor of a drafty, converted cabin, surrounded by trees. So there's the steady c-clunk, c-clunk of the front door shifting back and forth in its jamb, the skritch-skritch of branches against the roof, and the keening wail (with low, oscillating undertones) of the wind in the eaves so loud that it sounds like someone running a shop vac in the next room. For. Seven. Hours. Straight.
Trade ya. Winds are about the same, but the outdoor thermometer needs to go up a few degrees to reach zero.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you're not going to get much sympathy, Tam.
ReplyDelete9 degrees here currently. I'd take a photo of the blowing snow for you but, barring some emergency, I am darn sure I'm not going outside today.
It's never the cold that bugs me, it's the wind.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite chimenea weather is when it's below 30 degrees and dead calm. With the wind, any warmth the chimenea makes gets blown away, and the wood gives out in minutes since the breeze has it burning like a blast furnace.
Uhhhmmmm, well 73 and sunny. Need to go buy some patio furniture in a few minutes. Now that I have a patio to sit on, drink a beer, read, smoke a good cigar and listen to the sound of gunfire from the range a 1/2 mile away.
ReplyDelete0:-)
I'm hearing gunfire from the range 75 yards away. Barely. It's downwind, see...
ReplyDeleteAround here the wind blows most of the time; the only place I've seen that has more wind is Wyoming.
ReplyDelete-1F here this morning with a wind chill of -25F. Visibility was about 100-200 feet when I ventured out in the Jeep this morning.
ReplyDeleteSucks.
Bound to be warm and light, balmy breezes at the end of that U-Haul trailer trail.
ReplyDeleteThe negative temps don't matter one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if the wind's been blowing All. Day. Long. where you are, then I don't want to be there either.
I hate wind. Hot wind, cold wind, wet wind, dry wind, it doesn't matter. If it's wind, I hate it.
I'm with you. Cold? Awesome. Throw a few more logs in the stove. Hot? Not gonna be a problem next time around. Wind? Our rain gutters are specifically calibrated to turn the house into a giant kazoo when the wind gets above a stiff breeze, and spring/fall in the mountains bring plenty of wind well above that point, compounded by being on a canyon rim.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I think I've got the problem taken care of, we just get a new note from a different section. Maybe I can tune the house to play Ride of the Valkyries or something.
Weather usually doesn't bother me much, but we've occasionally had wind here that lasted for a day or two that actually shook the walls of this old farmhouse. Doors weren't shifting in their jams, they were actually buzzing.
ReplyDeleteThat drove me a little batty after a while.
Funny, I dislike stong winds so much, I wrote a short story about an old loner who hated the wind and curses it so vehemently one day, it carries him off -- kind of like Lovecraft's intense dislike of the cold driving his horror short, Cool Air.
ReplyDeleteWe've had a pretty nasty wind but it's dieing down. Having put a lot of work into buttoning up the house has helped considerably. Still plenty to do but at least the wind doesn't come inside to play as much as it had been.
My son went on a field trip to the Oregon Trail when he was in grade school. My wife and I went along to help. One of the things I remember reading in one of the museums was that some of the pioneers went insane from the wind that lasted weeks.
ReplyDeleteThey couldn't get away from it with just covered wagons and tents for shelter. And of course the dust was in everything.
Some actually committed suicide only a few days travel away from shelter.
I think the lesson for Tam is that should she decide to become a pioneer she should choose space or a planet without an atmosphere.
Bullets do well in an atmosphere free environment. For a long time now I've wanted to do some 1000 yard shooting on the moon. It would be pretty easy to set some new records. Of course I would need a custom gun that would be usable when I'm all suited up.
If the gravity is low enough you can even put a bullet into orbit. Of course shooting yourself in the back that way would be pretty embarrassing.
It was blowing pretty good over this way as well. I grew up on the coast, where a good breeze ment there was fun to be had out on the water.
ReplyDeleteIn the early 90s work had me stuck out in Cali for a few years, while a onshore breeze was usually pleasant the Santa Ana winds were anything but.
73 degree high earlier this afternoon, it has gone down to about 60 this evening. Wind has been about 10 MPH all day out of the north - a "cold front" moved in.
ReplyDeletegive me cold, drab and dreary weather anyday.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, 15-18 knots... sounds like a great day to go sailing. (Not at 50 degrees though.)
ReplyDeleteOh, they were out luffing and reefing and otherwise nauticaling about on the lake all day.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend weather stripping for that drafty, clunky door, but at this time, what's the point? ;
ReplyDelete