Why We Live Here
 

...well, some of us anyway.

Text rec'd from my son, 6:00 PM CST (Minot, ND)

"WHAT: For the wind chill advisory, very cold wind chills. Wind chills as low as 35 below zero. For the Wind Chill Warning, dangerously cold wind chills expected. Wind chills as low as 55 below zero.

WHERE: Western and central North Dakota, including the James River Valley."

My daughter lives up there and she sent pictures of "sun dogs", illusions of double rainbows caused by the cold air and sun.
I ask her where she got the viking DNA from since Chicago was never like that.

Seeing the sun dogs is good luck! Called parhelions in meterology, in mythology they are considered good luck. One story from Greek mythology has the bright lights from Zeus walking his dogs.

In the Middle Ages in Britain, they swayed a war. The Parhelions appeared in the sky, & the soldiers started to mutter, but a wiley King, King Edward IV immediately rode to the front of his army & declared it was a fortuitous sign from God. The triple suns represented the York boys, himself & his two brothers; the Sunne in Splendour & that this was a sure sign they would win the battle. As they did. Confidence being what it is.

Yeah. Extreme cold can do some funny things. Some times those sun dogs take on the appearance of two small suns, each about 15 degrees equidistant from the actual sun.

One of my most enduring memories from childhood is standing outside waiting for the bus at the end of our (rather long) driveway, just as the sun was coming up in January. Mornings of -40 were not uncommon (we never really knew how much lower than that it got, because mercury freezes solid at -40 and bursts the thermometer, so we always had a few extra on hand). Anyway the rising sun if it struck a tree just right would warm it up enough so that the tree would explode. Sounded just like a rifle shot. Didn't happen often but now and again when walking in the woods you'd see a tree that was split maybe 2/3 of the way up and know that that is what happened.

The longest twenty years I ever spent was thirty months in Rochester, NY. Mostly I missed the sun as it was overcast almost all the time during the winter (lake effect maybe?). One year we had 144 inches of snow, half that being normal. The summers were incredible, though.

I lived in Elmira for 40 years. While not in the "snow belt", and getting far less snow than you did in Rochester, we also had long, cloudy, dreary winters with little sunshine.

I once spent a winter weekend in Toronto. The weather was cold, but brilliantly sunny, with a sharp northwesterly wind. We went up to the observation floor of the CN tower and looked south across the lake towards Rochester. You could see a wall of clouds and snow from the lake effect. So while it was sunny and bright (but cold) in Toronto, I am sure it was cloudy and snowy in Rochester.

I spent 35 years in the Corning, NY area (just west of Elmira. ) A friend described the months from November through March as being in a black and white movie. That is one of several reasons why we are Florida residents!