Deep Freeze.

We made it to sixteen degrees last night, and so did everybody else all over the country, basically, which means live standups this morning on all the newses: fresh-faced J-school grads in pink fleece berets and/or leather bombers standing out by a field of strawberries or oranges in Florida and stumbling through the science of coating plants with ice to keep them from freezing. What they're reporting: that no one knows whether or how much anything's been damaged, and that no one will know for several days. Now that makes for some compelling video. Wait for it: here comes the sprinkler again.

I do feel for the farmers: That's me every spring hanging sheets over the budding azaleas, turning pots upside down on what hosta has come up already, covering the daylilies with milk crates and towels. I once planted a tomato garden in March and lit charcoal smudge fires along the rows during an April freeze. They lived. Then, later in the sumer, they got creamed by the Yellow Death, as do all of my tomatoes, every goddamn year.

Two summers ago I moved my brother from Maine to Maryland during a heat wave so fierce that NPR led that afternoon with a live radio weather report from the streets of New York City. And how hot is it out there, Jim? Very hot, Neil. Back to you. We were in my pickup, no AC, on the New Jersey Turnpike. Then we blew a tire. Those NPR boys were correct: it was, indeed, very hot. And this: while changing the tire, I both burned and cut myself on the steel of the steel-belted radial.

I guess maybe I hurt for the J-school kids, too. I worry they don't know much except how to wear fleece berets and how not to stumble over their own names when they say them out loud, and then we send them out to stand in front of something that's either very hot or very cold and explain that very fact. Not an easy task. As you can see, Julie, it's very cold here. Julie cannot see that, though. Julie is in the studio. Julie has seven years experience already, and she's blonde, and that means she's been bumped up to the studio. You, though, have to go stand in the field and say it's cold.

It's cold here. It went down to sixteen overnight, and we're gonna be cold again tonight. I'm a little worried about the potted pansies, a little worried about the Dusty Miller. Not much I can do, though. Don't know how much, if any, damage has been caused. Won't know for several days. This is ATP, reporting live for ANYLF.