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While we have not had the extreme cold weather other parts of the US have had this winter, in Western WA we did have about three inches of snow a few days ago. It’s nearly gone after a couple days of near 40 degree temps (That’s Foreign Hat, not Centipede) but gotten colder again. NWS is predicting “chance” of snow.

Here in the western suburbs of Washington-on-the-Potomac we saw 75 degrees F on Tuesday and 84 on Wednesday last week … daytime highs over 50 F for the foreseeable future, looks like old man Winter has packed his bags and headed south for vacation early this year.

We’re suppose to get rain tonight which is SoCal speak for a light drizzle.

Anyway, take the chickens inside!

It rains on the SF peninsula during o-dark thirty commute, and I almost get hit head-on by a moron rabbiting through an intersection where I had the left-turn light, then about 10 miles later get to see a car spin out, hit the median and get airborne. But, he stuck the landing. Gave him a solid 8/10. Thank god it doesn’t snow here. These morons would be piled on the side of the 280 like firewood.

straight, flat wide open roads here in the frozen freakin north….just covered with 1/4 inch of ice since november and the occaisional couple inches of snow. normal stuff for alaska. yet there are the morons from outside who still think 6000 pounds of lufted drugstore cowboy texas truck will stick at 75 mph….. it does make for an entertaining drive to town…..

Geeze, this just the usual February here in Eastern Canada…it seems all very exciting there though :+)

Interesting thread on how to date clay pipes:

https://twitter.com/TideLineArt/status/967442120322768896

Also, it was on 26th Feb 1975, that Pc Stephen Tibble QPM was shot dead by Liam Quinn, an American member of the Provisional IRA. The officer, who had been in the police service for 6 months, was pursuing Quinn through Hammersmith in West London when the shooting took place.

Sorry. He did only 18 years and the was cut loose.

Ric – very cool link on the clay pipes. About the long stems though: when we lived in Williamsburg VIrginia, historic long stem clay pipes were common but they were called ‘Tavern Pipes’ rather than ‘Churchwarden Pipes’. We were told that you’d buy a smoke at a tavern by buying a bowlful of tobacco, and borrowing one of the Pub’s pipes, just as you used their beer steins. The pipe’s long stem was a sanitary measure – when you got the pipe you would break off the tip of the stem where the last customer had had his lips. Thus a long stem meant that more customers could use the pipe before it was ‘used up’.

@gromulin Thank god it doesn’t snow here.These morons would be piled on the side of the 280 like firewood.

Funny and true…although I loved racing down 280 in the dead of night…until I bagged a 3 point buck.

I often passed some moron sitting in a precarious position along 80 or 101 wondering how the hell he/she got there.

Then there was the woman who drove up the guard wall and off the elevated in-bound ramp at SFO in a Volvo wagon. She survived with nary a scratch, no doubt to do something else spectacularly stupid on wheels.

I don’t know why the Bay Area attracts so many bad drivers who outdo themselves at the first drop of rain. It’s just nuts.

@gromulin, @BJM – I did find one road in the SF area used almost exclusively by very good drivers, at least during commute time: Skyline. We lived in a house at about 1200′ overlooking Boulder Creek (I mention altitude because we did see snow twice during our four-year stint), and my job was in Foster City. It was 52 miles one way and it rarely took me more than one hour to make the trip, and this was on a twisty up-n-down mountain two-lane road. Everybody on that road going to or from work knew every curve and every turnout. We all drove like demons and had a great deal of fun. On top of it all it is a spectacularly beautiful drive with places you could look over one shoulder and see the Pacific and over the other shoulder see across the SF Bay all the way to Mt. Diablo on a clear day. We were in the area from 2004 to 2012, and in Boulder Creek the last four years of that.

Now we’re in flat and sunny Florida. What we lack in mountains we make up for with gorgeous cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds.

All we gots is rain, and lots of it.
One of my breakers has popped and won’t reset, so I think I have a damp circuit somewhere because of all the danged rain.

At least that’s the excuse I use for Mrs Durned.

@Uncle Al…OMG…we three prolly passed each other in commute traffic at some point…and here we are again in Jolly Old (virtually). Small world, eh?

We fled the Bay Area five years ago for the Sierra foothills wine country. The only thing I miss is Yank Sing.

Cheer up, it could be flooding.

Stoaty—I hope you and Badger are snug and warm, curled up before a fire, or an electric heater 🙂 Our weather in San Antonio has been cooler than usual, but the birds are courting and the trees are budding.

Here in the City that lights and hauls the world we had, last week, a day when the temperature reached 73°F (roughly 22°C), followed by a day of snowfall with an accumulation of 3 or 4 inches, followed by a day in the 40s Fahrenheit (4-8 C), with some freezing rain, followed (thank God!) by warmish weather and rain. That was the most extreme cycle we’ve had this winter, but it wasn’t all THAT extreme …
On the plus side, we’ve had 4 snowstorms, and I never had to shovel…

Let’s learn latin:

https://twitter.com/latinlanguage

We had 2 days (not weeks, days) of cold weather in January — temps well below freezing at night, and in the higher 20s F. in the daytime. A little snow actually fell. From the reaction of the TV people, you’d have thought Jehovah was about to erase the entire world and start over. Bridges were closed, schools (including my work — but I couldn’t have driven there anyway), and all sorts of businesses. What a buncha wimps.

Of course, around here, keeping people off the roads in snow or ice is a good thing. The local denizens don’t know how to drive in the dry, let alone the wet.

As for me, I’m huddling in front of my air conditioner. Temps since late Jan. have been in the high 70s F., breaking 80 this past weekend. The TV weather pundits say we have a cold front coming, but here that means the temps will only be 20 degrees above where they should be in wintertime, not 30 degrees.

Eleven months a year of sticky nasty summer. Gah.

Teachers vs. Students Snowball Fight:

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/968533181501792256

Snow related: One school day when it snowed a lot, my teacher told the class if we wanted, we could save our half-pint cartons of chocolate milk (our school-mandated afternoon snack), and she would fetch big bowls from the cafeteria, and we’d make snow ice cream. I honestly don’t remember if it was good or not, but it was great fun from a normally rigid teacher, and I remember it 58 years later!

(And I still drink a glass of chocolate milk almost every afternoon. It cures my longing for chocolate and keeps me satisfied until supper.)