Snow Cover.

It's cold out there, and the moon on the crest of the newfallen snow sparkles about as it should—a fine way to ring January out and drag February in. I was ready for spring, was happy to see the pansies beginning to recover from the last snow, but this ought to set us back about to the right date, the right spot, ought to hold the pansies as they were and keep my way-too-late-planted daffodils and tulips from arriving too early. This is how it goes in January. You want for a sooner spring. You know you shouldn't want for it. You want for it anyway.

Rainfall totals coming. Busted rain gauge and the impossibility of converting six inches of snow plus two of sleet has held us up thus far. Doppler-estimated seems the way to go. More to come, more to come.

That woodstove works OK. I'm mired in chapter seven of book two, but I'm not cold.

Dog. Boots I bought in Boston. Split oak. Coffee. Sour mash. Snow shovel. Four or five layers of shirt. School on the edge of starting back up. This is a life about which one probably ought not lodge complaint.

Sledding Snow.

Many and big thanks directed towards the person of JBW, who pushed me back out into the finest sledding snow I've seen since the nineties, I think, or maybe 2000, if that was 2000—whenever that was, back on Carr St., when we picked up those two big snows back-to-back in grad school. It may have been 2000. I was in my second apartment, across the street from my first, so that must bring us screaming into the last decade, but still and no matter: JBW, he of the MD and MA upbringing, knows from snow, and as he said, 'Today the runner sled is king,' which means we're packed, we're powdery, we're icy, we're of the sort of snow that even a homemade 2'x4' 1/4" plywood sled—slider?—would and did do in a pinch, though the steering left something to be desired.

Cold. Sleet like a textbook definition. Roads packed down to where you wouldn't want to be out there.

In the oven right now rides along a roasting chicken, some yellow-fleshed potatoes, and, as soon as the timer dings, some skinny little carrots to finish off our one-pan meal. The fancies want 12 degrees tonight. They also wanted a foot of snow, but that doesn't mean that later on I won't step out onto the back porch, covered over again by a half-inch of snow that didn't even make the radar, and see what cold feels like.

Much talk today about how this is not the sort of snow you see all the time. That this is the kind of snow you only see every few years. Not so much amount, but type. There's a lot of bluster over here at ANYLF—never seen it rain like that, don't remember it ever so hot, etcetera—but this is for sure a five-year snow. Maybe ten. This is and was a go-down-in-the-basement-and-build-an-unsteerable-sled snow. And that's good, because that's about the way things went today.

I'm thirty-five. It feels right about now like an unsteerable sled pitched me several times off it and down a hill. I love it.

Not quite...

...the foot they promised, but at least six inches of snow, maybe eight, followed by as much sleet as i've ever seen. It's been sleeting—hard—since five or six this morning. Still sleeting. Best sound in the world. This has something to do with temperature layers in the air. Past that, you'll want an expert. More to follow. There is an idea around ANYLF GlobalSnowDay HQ about a sled made out of plywood.

WFMY, WGHP.

Same song, deeper verse.



Nobody quite seems to be on the same page about just where that one foot line might be, but this is how things go. NWS says 8 to 11 inches. Well, that's not true. They said that all morning, and then this afternoon they added "or more."

Don't touch that dial.

Really? Really?

from the NWS: ...THE HEAVIEST PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED TO FALL FROM 4 AM SATURDAY THROUGH 4 PM SATURDAY. THIS MAKES THIS AN UNUSUALLY LONG DURATION WINTER STORM FOR CENTRAL NORTH CAROLINA...

Eric; Van.

Thanks, WFMY and WGHP.

Your Source.

Friends and fans of weather, if you're not keeping it tuned here, it seems like it may be about time to start to possibly consider maybe keeping it tuned somewhere.

Winter Storm?

They say snow. I want to say that I both do and do not believe. News 14 says ice. There, I'm closer. I do have a vision of AMR and the cats and the dog and yr hmbl svt, ANYLF, all piled into the shed and onto the guest mattresses while the woodstove burns along apace. And I want to say that that there vision is not the worst I can imagine. I could manage that. 48 or 72 hours of coffee and woodstove and animals all piled in and on would be a fine way to close down January. So: absent a limb through the building or the outbuilding, I say bring it right along, if you please.

Sump Pumped.

Last night the sump pump cut on and would not cut off and it shook and then smoked and I stood down there looking into the pit and thought to myself, This has been trying to happen for a year. Paid a plumber $100 three days after we bought the house to park his green van in the driveway, wade into my three inches of standing basement water, shake the stuck pump on, and leave. I spent the rest of the year doing the wading and shaking myself, getting up at three and four in the morning during serious and good storms, wandering down there to shake the damn pump on, going back to bed. But last night, a Friday night, when it came on would not shake off—when it sprung a pencil-eraser-sized leak out of what has to be a half-inch of rust and ran and ran and ran and then burned and burned, give or take, and when I finally knuckled under and decided, Oh, hell, I'll call a plumber—there was an episode at the end of the year wherein I tried to convince the home warranty types to cover it, but they declined—I then worked out the calling-a-plumber-on-the-weekend math, and said, what the hell, it's broken now, I can't break it worse, I'll try it.

Right here is a good place to talk about the flood watch we're under through Monday morning. Threeish inches, perhaps. Which will, in our brief history here in 27401, historically put water in the basement.

AMR, upon my announcement of the afternoon's plans: you just don't want to go out back and write. Me: but the flood watch! the flood watch!

Cut to: The excellent and deeply exuberant and bizarrely, for a big box, helpful dude at the Home Depot, upon my saying: the web made this look easy, but you should know I'm not that good a plumber: Come with me.

He pulled every single part I needed off the shelf. He explained it to me piece by piece. He was kind, if forty to fifty percent crazy. He was from your local hardware store circa 1982, the golden era of Fellas' Day, so instituted by my dad to get us boys out of the house and leave my mother some coffee and air.

It was easy. It works. And there ain't no leaks. I set it a little high in the pit, but, hey: that can be fixed. That's about par for my handymanliness, anyway. The flood watch remains. Three inches. Maybe just two. Wind. Storms. And I cut some wood for the stove while the saw was out for the inch-and-a-half PVC. No good excuse not to go out back tomorrow.

Not sure how to address a life where the efficacy of the sump pump seems more and more of utmost import. If it can be fixed, I've been needing to fix it. If it can be broken by fooling with it, I've been wanting to do that, too. We are tilting, friends and fans of weather, at windmills, and at anything else we can find to tilt at.

Local Forecast.

It's raining, and it's blowing the windows around in their frames, and apparently the fancies want us to go from upper-fifties today—bulb-planting weather, however late, but at 75% off, who wouldn't take a chance on tulips and daffodils?—to mid-thirties and rain tomorrow. Winter rides back in on whatever it tends to ride back in on. Six snow-white horses? A big block of ice? A storm sliding all the way east from California?

I'm edging toward remembering, again, what this little experiment is meant to be. I think the crazed late-fall and winter made this space more of a luxury, or an obligation, or maybe both. What it's supposed to be is a wee spot to work on the sentence, on the temperature, on the pressure, on what comes next. There's been so much next of late, though, that I've been having trouble distinguishing from the now and the next, the next from the after that. But today, planting bulbs, dirt finally back under the fingernails and AMR inside and upstairs trying to get her office squared away, I remembered one more time why I so love the weather: you stand by yourself outside and it is often enough all there is, all you can be sure you know. This morning, before it rained, it smelled like rain. Warm rain. This afternoon, so warm that I finally had to take my hat off, it already smelled like we were headed back the other way.

Thirty-six degrees and rain ought to be a good solid test of whether or not I've taught myself the woodstove out back. Whether or not I've taught myself plot re: the new book is another thing altogether.

I'm going to try to be back. The rain gauge is broken. We'll have to go with a ruler dipped into the wheelbarrow for now. It has been blissfully, unseasonably warm. We are, however, for the next few days aimed squarely for January. This is the forecast. This is what there is.

Warm Snap.

By the time I got the electrician and the chimneyer out of here, it was almost four o'clock, but that left plenty of time to take the dog downhill to the park, where seven hundred thousand other Gate-Citiers were celebrating the thirty or so extra degrees we received today above and beyond what had this year been our mean and median. What a day it was. It was a day so nice I've almost recovered from having spent it watching work go on in the building instead of doing work inside the building. It was a day so nice you just kept standing in the window, or on the deck, remembering what this felt like. This felt like greener lawns, is what it felt like.

Rain coming. Big old springish-looking storm coming up out of the gulf, out of Texas, which means it'll be springish, but not in the way it was today: it'll be wet and dark and cold again, and we'll see temps in the forties by Sunday. If ANYLF had to go on camera with an official guess, we'd say an inch of rain. Maybe a little more. We'd say this: If you had the better part of half a cord of oak stacked in your driveway, you might ought to head to the big box for a tarp. If you had pansies that looked freeze-shocked, then this little storm just might do the trick. If you felt like today saved you, though, then we'd say you may want to lay up with a bottle of scotch and some Wheat Thins to hold you over until the sun comes out again. This was not January. This was not how it goes. I mean, sure, it goes like this sometimes, but don't go looking for crocus blooms just yet. We're a ways off from that manner of thing.

The building just goes on and goes on. Which is good. Because the (new) novel is ankle-deep in the sand.

Moderating Pattern.

Maybe it was the Christmas lights. I unplugged them this afternoon so I could use the extension cord to hook up the chop saw to cut eleven-foot ceiling joists in half to fit in the truck to take to the dump, and behold and lo, both, it turns mild. I'm not saying you don't want to run the heat tonight, but I am saying that if you had an as-yet inconsistently-heated outbuilding, it might not be a huge problem to bring it up to temp tomorrow via the woodstove only. Or I'm saying: the ongoing series of experiments to see if the building can be heated overnight may not yield useful dividends this evening, as it will only be dropping into the low thirties instead of the low tens and teens.

And it'll be warmer tomorrow. We edge in the afternoon toward—probably not to, but toward—sixty.

Don't be alarmed, friends and fans of Carolina winter: forties and semi-serious rain on Saturday night and Sunday. That's woodstove weather if there ever was any.

Trying to write. Wee crisis of confidence this week. Trying to write on through that. It's been hard to get at the forecast this year. It's been hard to get at anything. I haven't even changed over the rainfall totals. That's coming. A quarter-inch on the year. More coming this weekend. Sometimes, the sentences, they do not come. And sometimes, even when they do, it gets hard to believe in any part of them.

Milder weather on the way, on the whole. Still chilly. Still winter. But not so tin-skillet cold.

Brief Snow.

I feel pretty certain that it snowed this morning. I was still working through the front half of the pot of coffee, and the sun coming out at the same time was a little confusing, and there wasn't enough to register anything more than a trace, and it didn't stick or even wet the surfaces of anything, but I feel like I know snow when I see it, and that sure seemed like I was seeing snow. So. Winter—though we're supposed to see a break from all this over the next few days—for the time being pushes onward.

At the dump, the guy running the show up on the hill at the Small Vehicle Convenience Site gave me a Dum-Dum and a handwritten Bible verse from Psalms. Something about following the law.

That book out back has a little plot now, but it might be of the shoehorned-in variety.

This has somehow been a week that could have been easier. And it's only Tuesday. But the light coming in the west-facing kitchen window right now is almost enough to make up for all of that.

Cold. It's been cold all year.

Heating, Cooling.

The temperature is bombing itself on up out there: an hour ago it was thirteen. Now it's twenty-one. Good morning, sunshine. The plan: when that coffee maker beeps, put some shoes on and go out and see if that new heater I stuck in the wall last evening kept the shed warm enough to give the woodstove a fighting chance.

It's been cold here. It's been so cold. They're saying mid-forties by mid-week, though, and I could go for that. This has been interesting, but I'm wanting something else, I think. The back yard is so beaten down by all these teens and twenties and all my walking and 2x4ing all over it that it needs some kind of semi-sustained above-freezing intervention. This coming week: truckloads of old shed to the dump. The truckloads of new shed, save for the siding, are just about hung up on the new shed. If you stick your nose in the breeze right, you can almost feel the early phase of this coming to a close, however many days late. Assuming I get the rest of the insulation up this weekend, that'll do it. There are gutters and soffits for the back—and eaves for the front and back—still to go, but let's not worry ourselves too, too much about that, OK? Let's count those as little minor late-afternoon diversions. Let's say that if I can get the uphill gable insulated today, then I'll be at the place where I can write in the afternoons, too.

Wood fire. The stubbornly plotless new novel. The coldest cold snap in recent memory. Sun like a January sun, like real winter, working its way across the lower edge of the sky.

Tiny Snow.

The city salted Friendly and Market and they also salted a little down in the bottom of the neighborhood, but not up here—perhaps they know I have nowhere to go and nowhere to be. Perhaps they also know that there's no real chance of any real snow. Half an inch, the fancies are saying. And only half a chance of that. So: scrap sheathing boards over the top of the firewood pile, and we'll leave it at that.

Finally got the outbuilding warm today. I'm learning that little stove. And about R-values.

This may be the first time we've even clouded over this year, it occurs to me. Don't get excited: we return to freeze-dried and sun over the weekend. It's forty-two degrees out there right now, though. Feels balmy. Feels like you might not even need a jacket.

Around these parts tonight we'll raise a glass in the direction of Nashville, towards my grandparents, 400 some-odd miles away as the crow drives, if the crow were to drive, on that same Highway 70 right over there on top of that Greensboro hill. They taught me to love rib roast, cooked one the Saturday after Thanksgiving for years and years. In 2740X tradition, I'm grilling one tonight while I quarter-assedly watch the championship game. I never much care about this game. I never much like the teams in it. But I do love a good cold-weather rib roast, and this is some good cold weather.

Happy January. And thanks, Apple Store Genius Bar people, for returning my machine at top speed and safe and sound, and clean, even. No more thumb grease on the space bar. And a computer that comes on. What a country. What a new year. How nice it is to sit in the quiet of that nearly-insulated building and be chilly, and then, once that stove fires, not be chilly. Now if I can just bang out a sentence or three, all will be good and right and holy.

No Computer.

Machine still in California, and it will be for the next few days. Spotty borrowed-machine forecast continues.

KFW tonight at dinner, after I'd lamented the solid cold: it's weather, isn't it?

The father, along for the ride, of the gentleman who delivered my half-cord of oak this morning: I'm in it for the McDonald's breakfast. What you gotta do is order a Sausage McMuffin and get 'em to put a tomato on it. You bring your own hot sauce.

OK, World Wide Web. Back to life mainly, and semi-pleasantly quietly, without you.

Wood Stove.

I have been out back and I have lit the woodstove and what we are now waiting for is a good fire, a warmer writing shed, the first day wherein the first thing is to write instead of to wire or insulate or what have you. Those things still need doing, but a deadline is a deadline, and I'm calling that space usable if not for everybody then surely for me. I'm wearing all the clothes there are, and I'm going out there. Insulation goes up on the walls this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon. But mornings are no longer for working. Mornings, instead, are for working.

It is, it seems, historically cold, so that's something to tell the kids about. The Winter of Ten. Surely the fancies are running logos complete with iced-over lettering, but I haven't seen that. Nor have I seen much internets since yesterday, when my fancy machine went dark. It's being sent off to Santa's workshop, my dear, and they'll fix it up there, and then bring it back here. So. Who knows when we'll get back to the forecast. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not. All depends on all else. What I can tell you in the interim: we stay bright and cold until Friday, when we may go gray and snowy and cold. I need a load of firewood. A roasted chicken. A Dukes of Hazzard Thermos full of soup. I probably need to install the heater I bought. Hard to keep the fire stoked overnight.

So Cold.

Bone cold. Deeply cold, so cold, cold and cold. Don't take the trash out without gloves on. That would be a terrible plan. Cozy up by the tree, though, as we approach the last of the twelve days of Christmas. Think on how to finish the electric in that vaulted ceiling out back. Wear extra layers. Work in the imperative. Have an evening. Go to bed. Stay warm, if you can.

First Night.

We went out wet and cold, and we come in clear and really cold. There's some bookkeeping needed here—some chat about how much rain last year, whence and whither the drought, and etcetera, but tonight is not the night for that. Tonight is the night of a belly full of TLK collards and blackeyed peas and pork five or six ways and a little glass of whiskey here on the armrest beside me and the hated Floridas kicking the hell out of the coachless Cincinnatis on the TV, on mute, and the prospect of maybe finishing the sistered rafters out there in the outbuilding on the morrow and maybe even some insulation and a stove fire that/which heats the building and all of this is to say: oh hell and damn, blogoweathersphere, here we go one more time around the maypole, or whatever it is we wind around year after year.

Cold and cold and cold coming. If you do have a ceiling to insulate, now seems really to be the time. The fancies are wanting to give us some winter to start this thing off.

Also This:

From ye olde National Weather Service:

...A PROLONGED PERIOD OF VERY COLD AIR TO AFFECT THE REGION BEGINNING TONIGHT... LIKELY LASTING FOR A WEEK OR MORE...

A VERY COLD ARCTIC AIR MASS WILL SURGE INTO NORTHWEST NORTH CAROLINA TONIGHT... WITH INTENSE COLD EXPECTED THROUGH THE WEEKEND. LOWS BY SATURDAY MORNING WILL FALL TO AROUND 15 DEGREES. THIS WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY GUSTY NORTHWEST WINDS TO 20 MPH. WIND CHILL READINGS WILL DIP TO AS LOW AS 5 TO 10 DEGREES SATURDAY MORNING. THE TEMPERATURES MAY REMAIN BELOW FREEZING FOR SEVERAL DAYS WITH HIGHS ONLY IN THE UPPER 20S EXPECTED SATURDAY AND AROUND 30 SUNDAY. OVERNIGHT LOWS NEAR 10 ARE EXPECTED ON SATURDAY NIGHT. THE EXPECTED DURATION AND INTENSITY OF THIS COLD EVENT WILL BE A VERY UNUSUAL OCCURRENCE. THIS INTENSE COLD EVENT WILL BE NEARLY CONTINUOUSLY REINFORCED BY A COUPLE OF VERY STRONG ARCTIC HIGHS. THESE HIGHS WILL PUSH FROM NORTH CENTRAL CANADA SOUTHWARD THROUGH THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN UNITED STATES DURING THE NEXT WEEK. THIS COLD EVENT WILL LIKELY LAST THROUGH THE NEXT 7... TO POSSIBLY 14 DAYS. SEVERAL DAYS OF SUBFREEZING TEMPERATURES MAY OCCUR. A COMPARABLE COLD SPELL BASED ON SOME OF THE HISTORICAL COLD EPISODES FROM THE PAST INCLUDES THE LAST TWO WEEKS OF JANUARY 1977. PREPARATIONS SHOULD BE MADE NOW TO ENSURE THAT HEATING SYSTEMS ARE IN STRONG WORKING ORDER... ANY EXPOSED PIPES ARE PROPERLY INSULATED OR COVERED... AND CRAWL SPACE VENTS ARE CLOSED. CHECK ON THE ELDERLY TO ENSURE THAT THEY HAVE ADEQUATE AND SAFE HEATING. IN ADDITION... REMEMBER THE SAFETY RULES FOR SAFE HOME HEATING. ENSURE YOUR PETS HAVE A WARM PLACE TO STAY.