This morning when I left for work it was ten degrees below zero in the Twin Cities with a wind chill factor of thirty below. In Orr, Minnesota it was twenty nine below with a fifty-one below wind chill. I listened to the national ABC news radio broadcast, and FUNNY I didn't hear any mention of the cold weather here.
Which is how it should be. Cold weather is not national news unless it has more than a regional impact. If a cold snap in Florida is going to mean higher prices for orange juice, I want to hear about it. But if someone's pipes freeze in Boston I really don't need to know.
It's winter. It gets cold. Put on a hat and STFU (since WTF has become widely accepted and understood, I figure we should expand the field-if you don't know what STFU means drop me an e-mail and I'll
Cold weather days such as today are, in their unique way, a feast for the senses. At least for some of the senses. Often words such as dreary and dark are associated with winter but during the daylight hours a frigid day is anything but. The sun radiates brilliantly, if not warmly. The colors of the landscape, limited as they might be, are more pronounced and sharper. It's as if God turned up the contrast knob a notch or two.
Sound is amplified and crisper. A jet plane flying high overhead sounds much closer than it appears. It's not necessarily louder, the noise is just more proximate. The snow crunching under your feet is clearly audible. It's almost as if there was small microphones planted throughout the environment that transmit sounds right into your ear.
The one sense that goes lacking is smell (and I suppose along with it taste). The air is so clean, so clear, so sanitized by the cold, that you can't usually pick out any smell at all. Which is, in most cases, a good thing.
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