Pounded By Snowfall

Yes, I plan on taking a moment to comment on the weather.

The weather, is of course the last resort of many people when they have painful small talk and chit chat with people with which they have nothing in common. It is brought up after uncomfortable silences and after the other attempts at conversation have failed. Asking about "the kids" or "the parents" or "mutual acquaintances" have led to dead ends. Speaking in vague terms about your job, the other person's job, and the jobs of people you both variously know have worn out their use. You have tried everything you can think of, only the Weather is left. And once the weather is mentioned, both parties feel as though they have both truly failed.

Or at least, this seems to be the connotation that speaking of the weather has gotten for some reason. I, personally, have always considered the weather to be fairly interesting. It may be because I live in an area of the world where there actually is weather. If I lived in San Diego, for example, I might not have much to say or feel about it. "Wow, it sure is another beautiful day, isn't it? Just like 95% of the rest of the year!"

Boring.

But not here. Not in the Midwest. ESPECIALLY not in the Cincinnati, Ohio, region. It is probably not well known by the rest of the world - (because people get information from television and sometimes books, and as we all know, the people who make television shows only focus on NYC, Southern California, Florida, Las Vegas, or the New Orleans area, oh, and occasionally Texas and Aspen, Colorado. The midwest, southwest, south, north, pacific northwest, and all the other countries in the world are all ignored) - but Cincinnati has the most erratic weather of any place on the planet. I know that most people say this about where they live. Look at Jeremy and his talk of Indianapolis' weather. But he is wrong about it being the most erratic on Earth. Indianapolis is pretty consistently a variation of "deadly storms," "deadly heat," or "deadly snow drifts."

Cincinnati has those, too, but it also has "deadly ice storms," "deadly droughts," "deadly flash floods," and "pretty days."

Well, brothers and sisters, one thing IS fairly certain about this region. In the summer, it is never windy, and when it is, that means there is a horrible storm coming. And in the winter, it is grey and bleak and dreary until mid-January or so. Maybe there will be a snow dusting in late December, but it will melt by the next day, which will most likely be 70F in Nature's effort to make us all ill.

But not this year.

Yes, we have had drastic changes in temperature. Freezes followed by tshirt weather followed once again by freezes. However, last week, in this town I live in, we had an ice storm! Well, by "ice storm" I mean "ice shower," I guess because it did not devastate us and crash trees onto my house like the ice storm of late last year, as catalogged in my blog archives. It was less than an inch of ice coating everything. But.. And this is the strange thing.. It did not melt the next day. It did not reach temperatures of 60F+ as we all expected.

No.

It stayed below freezing for a WEEK. It still is, in fact! And tonight, out of the blue, we have gotten 4 - 8 inches of snow! And more is scheduled to fall, I hear.

This weather! This weather is for January or February, or a sad day in March! This weather is for Wisconsin! Not southern Ohio.

And since I am mostly out of touch with local news since I have no antennae for my television, I was unable to stock up on milk, bread, and canned goods, so the old lady in my brain tells me that I am surely doomed, god almighty, I am surely doomed. Heaven help us.

So, anyway, between the unusually severe hurricane season targeting specific cities as if planned, and now my local weather is behaving strangely, I can only conclude that whoever has the Weather Machine is an asshole.