Back at Home
Posted on January 30, 2019 Posted by John Scalzi 43 Comments
And my in-house editor is ready to go!
Also, it’s cold as balls right at the moment: -2, without windchill. Yes, I know other places in the US are colder at the moment. You know what? -2 is cold enough. This isn’t the Freeze Your Gonads Off Olympics. And if it is, I’m happy to let someone else take the gold.
I think I’m done traveling for a whole month. I don’t even know what I’ll do with myself. Actually I do: I’ll write. It’s kind of my thing.
Hope if it’s cold where you are that you’re keeping warm. And if it’s warm where you are, well. Have your smug little moment, I suppose.
Is that your reflection or your background screen in your Alexa Show or whatever that thing is on your desk?
Warm where I am? I would say so. 28C right now, 36C later. (That’s 83 now, 96 later for those of you still in the Stone Age). Greetings from Sydney, Australia.
Plenty cold here in Sterling, VA for my taste. Single digits this morning and tomorrow morning. Teens right now.
Make sure you bring your brass monkey in tonight! Cold enough here in MA; I don’t envy you folks over there in OH.
Ooof, look after yourself, OK? And after the kitties, too.
Weather. If anything exists to humble humans, it’s got to be the weather.
See, this is what happens when you move to Ohio. You don’t hear me bitching about the heat in July.
Actually, you do.
Very glad you got home safe, even if Ohio’s weather is just a bit more brisk than California’s was. Most of the state where I live essentially closed down today (our high temp for the day was -10 with a wind chill of -26) so hunkering down with cats, hot chocolate and a good book is definitely the order of the day.
Enjoy your own bed, and give Master Smudge a chin-scritch for me.
I’m in AZ and I willingly take the summers here in exchange for the not-summers (we don’t really get winters where I’m living and my arthritis is grateful. Please stay warm-all kidding aside, -2 is no joking matter (that kind of cold would probably shorten my life).
It’s -1° F in Central NY right now in the early evening, and the high was a balmy 10° F late this morning. Yeah, it’s more than cold enough….
Actually, just came on here to say – My, Smudge has made himself to home, hasn’t he?
Welcome home!
Yeah, I’m in Phoenix where it’s low 70’s, but no smugness here. I always remember June and July and 115+…nothing to be smug about. Feel for all you folks freezing and hope you stay safe! Heard today that even postal routes are cancelled due to deadly cold (their slogan includes sleet and snow, but not cold)!
Give Mr. Smudge a skritch.
I’m in South Carolina, where the 21 degrees we were greeted with this morning is just COLD! Which leads me to think that I have lived here long enough to adapt, because 21 here feels much colder that 21 in New Jersey (where I lived before here). I no longer want to live anywhere that has temperatures preceded by a minus sign.
While I try to avoid doing smug I can do smug when asked. Two words, San Diego. The only oil I deal with goes in my car. Is that a good level of smug? Too much?
This is how we say goodbye to Solar Cycle 24.
I don’t know if it is my age or acclimatizing to Kentucky, but I’m a wimp for the cold now. When I lived in Milwaukee (or further north in Plattsburgh, NY), I could be outside in below zero weather and be fine for an hour or more. I was outside today for twenty minutes in 10 degree weather and I froze every moment.
Chiming in from Toronto: right now (8.45 pm), it’s -20C/-5F, with wind chill of -34C/-29F. I’m watching gardening shows on YT (there is sun & green &*warm*) whilst huddling under the duvet.
Was -34 with windchill of -57 yesterday evening when I was blowing drifted snow off my driveway and clearing the way for the mailman to deliver. Cold even for central Minnesota!
As I like to say, when the only temperature scale on which it’s currently above zero is the Kelvin scale, it’s freakin’ cold!
if you are not going any where for a month its good to think on making sure you don’t go anywhere and think on some projects you couldn’t get to before…if you have a month….if you would not be influenced by certain authors you could read some like Arthur c Clarke…stuff or Philip k dick…just ignore the tech descriptions in pkd stories…he mainly wrote the stories for the human interaction side anyways in my view…..yes pkd is outdated as sci fi in some ways. the one main book of Clarke that gets to me is childhoods end…so it may make me sound like any other sci fi fan but I read it with interest as a ufo researcher type guy. and for any boring times in your month of not going anywhere you could try to locate the sy fy channel presented childhoods end movie…very rare to see that…cheers.
I grew up in a rainforest, and I was an adult before I encountered cold. As a science fiction fan I like the cold because it is like another planet: You have to use technology, such as insulated clothing, to survive. In a cold clime, the default is to die. As a Larry Niven character said, “Nature wants to kill me.”
The United lounge at LAX called. Apparently you left 40 degrees fahrenheit in a small gift bag there. They will ship ASAP.
Its a bit chilly….
Yesterday morning when I headed off for work it was -29C (-20F). Which sucks, but we usually get a couple of weeks like that here in the cold-blistered Canadian prairies. Seeing weather maps showing much the same sort of thing penetrating well into the US, the sensation wasn’t “hah, see what WE have to deal with” but “oh, hell, those people don’t have the jackets for this.” Drape yourself with cats until the vortex subsides.
Up here on the mountain 13 miles above Paradise it’s damn cold. Snow on the way and will be snowing most of next week.
So much for California.🐺🐺🐺
Hey John Scalzi,
Have you seen the reports about snow pack in the Sierras? 106 percent of normal! Before Solstice!
Spring flooding is going to be epic!
Best,
Pedro, the Weather Troll
It’s almost as cold as the inside of a restaurant in July.
Representing from Chicago, where I am one of the brave-hearted fools who is still bicycle commuting in this stuff. Layers, man. Layers. I’m telling you.
Yeah, -2 F here too, but it’s supposed to get up in the 50’s by the weekend. I wish the temp fluctuations would smooth out a bit. It’s hell on my sinuses.
A climate change denier I know once told me you couldn’t trust the temperature readout in your car while driving because of windchill. I tried to explain how windchill actually works but it was way over his head so I finally ended the discussion by telling him that car therometers have built-in circuitry that adjusts for windchill. He seemed okay with that. I am a fabricator of fake news. Sigh.
I am also right next door in south central Indiana where it was -7° yesterday morning. Right now it is 4° and Sunday is supposed to be 60°. Another climate denier I have the displeasure of knowing asked me yesterday “Where’s your global warming now?” I told him to look in Australia. Idiot.
You missed our weather-related excitement today. Thunder! Lightning! HAIL!!
All of which = severely discombobulated L.A. drivers. Also a little too much suspense watching a construction-crane operator exiting his very dangerous position while lightning stalked about.
If the climate denier above is a sci-fi fan then you can refer him to the Doctor Who episode where he and Bill Potts go to one of the frost fairs, held back when the river Thames in London would freeze hard enough to hold up an elephant. The climate has been too warm to do that for generations now.
Also today’s (Thursday) BBC, referencing the U.S., explains the difference between weather and climate.
Bob Dye said, “Where’s your global warming now?” I told him to look in Australia. Idiot.
That was kind of you. I would have told him to look at the sun.
Oh you mean in Australia where in Tasmania has just had its driest January on record (2.4mm) and I am currently looking at smoke from the bushfires still threatening my house? Yup yup yup
Not smug, just quietly grateful and hoping everyone back East stays warm and comes out of this OK. Besides, it might snow here on Monday and already people are making that work from home. (Might snow, not will snow. But we have no plows, so…)
Climate is why you move somewhere; weather is what you get. I’m good, though — spent my first 21 years in Colorado, saw plenty below-zero weeks. Here in Berkeley CA we’re in the mid-50’s, with 4 days’ rain coming in.
-3 C in Helsinki right now, and I’m finding this uncomfortably warm; I would expect -10 .. -20 C.The packed snow on the bike paths gets soft, wheels dig into it, and I have to strip to my T shirt to avoid sweating horribly on my way to work. Should really give up and ski here instead of biking, and bring a change of clothes… The sea ice is in so bad a shape that I haven’t dared walk my dog there for a week now; even the craziest ice fishermen are mostly avoiding it. It should be thick enough to support a truck at this time of the year -.- We do have had some cold spells, but there’s been such a copious amount of snow this winter that the sea hasn’t frozen properly even when it’s been cold, there’s no strong ice, and the currents are eating the soft ice from underneath. So yeah, the climate change deniers could be pointed here, too.
On the other hand, at least we have lots and lots of snow, and it hasn’t melted away in a week after falling, as has been the case most winters last decade. We’ve had a snow cover at least all January. Makes the darkness at 60 degrees north a lot less dark. And yesterday the warm weather brought some really beautiful drifting fog.
Such an eager expression!
It does not matter how cold you-all are. What matters is that you keep the cats at a comfortable temperature.
Reporting in from downtown DC the brief “dusting” of snow predicted looks like it’s turning into something sustained…most annoying…at least it isn’t nearly as cold as it was the other day (though we didn’t go below Zero F).
“cold as balls”
An odd sort of phrase…..
Even though it’s not ‘cold enough to emboss a brass breastplate’ here, as my D&D crew used to say, I still have a healthy concern for friends and relatives in the polar vortex areas, like northern Ohio and the Eastern Seaboard. My brother has already run the snowblower in his drive every day this week.