Weather Report: Spring’s Winter

No-name creek re-freezing along its edges --

As I pulled on winter boots and coat and scarf and chook and mittens this morning, the temperature was 23ºF, with a “feels like” report of 9ºF. What is nowadays referred to “feels like” used to be called “wind chill” not all that long ago, but when I was a kid, it wasn’t called anything at all. We just had temperature, no matter how hard the wind was blowing and how much colder it felt than what the thermometer showed. 

Crows calling in the northeast at 9 a.m. sounded like ducks, their voices muted and distorted by the wind, that wind in the tall pines sounding like waves out on Lake Michigan. If woodpeckers were at work this morning, their hammerings were drowned out entirely. And yet, although the forecast had called for nothing but clouds today, large swathes of blue sky showed as the sun rose. A welcome sight!

Glimpses of blue sky and morning sun!

 

24 Hours in Dos Cabezas

Sun on Mountains After Snowy Night

As I looked north (above) on Wednesday morning, clouds were hiding the Dos Cabezas peaks. The view northeast (below) was similarly magical, however, with sunlight piercing the clouds and lighting portions of the snowy mountainsides.

Breakthrough

Glorious Leelanau morning!

Fall's Many Faces

Is anyone ever impatient for the season's first frost? Probably not, and yet, when it comes, there is no denying its magic.  Every leaf, every seed pod, every blade of grass takes on a new identity, dressed in costume for an ice palace ball. And since we know that it isn't winter, and it isn't snow, we feel that once the sun rises high enough, the frost will disappear, and the now-beautiful will turn Cinderella-dowdy.

Here comes the sun! Dowdy? How could anyone forget for a minute the beauty returning autumn sunlight would bring to roadsides, orchard trees, and blue Lake Michigan? South Fox Island never looked as close as it seemed on this sunny fall day.

Rain returned in Tuesday, for Election Day, but it didn't keep voters from the polls in our township. I went to town early and found no waiting line at all. Light inside the firehall coming through the doors shone on red maple leaves plastered to the pavement, and the red maple on Mill Street, always at its brightest on the day we go to vote, did its part to add a festive air to the important day.