Addiction Management

If I hadn't bled all over my kitchen over the weekend I would have assumed there was liquid caffeine running through my veins, so I have no room to mock anyone for their addiction to legally-attainable substances*.

I am very good at making sure I have access to adequate coffee/soda supplies in my apartment/cubicle/road trips, and Excedrin to keep the headaches away should I fail. Folgers singles--the coffee snob shudders, but you throw some milk and sugar in there, and Thanksgiving morning at a house with no coffeemaker becomes bearable, while you try to convince someone to go to Dunkin Donuts and get you some brewed coffee. :)

I realize this is junkie behavior.

But I would never go outside in -20°F weather with no socks looking for a fix (warning: gory medical photos). Hell, I've got wool socks over my cotton socks and my waterproof insulated boots just to dig out my car and go grocery shopping when it's +20°F.

Do you file this under "global warming is deadly!" or "tobacco use is deadly!"??

No word on whether this dumbass has medical insurance, but since they didn't leave him to die on the street he must (if President Obama isn't lying to me...hah!); in the brave new world of government healthcare I'm sure he'll pay a bigger penalty for smoking than he will be for being stupid. Fat people--well, you don't deserve surgery unrelated to your condition, because of your "lifestyle choices." Snowboarders--that knee replacement is no problem!

But mostly I'm annoyed with the tone of the article. We're supposed to feel sorry for him, he almost died, he might lose toes...he's an idiot. The idiot supply in this country is in no danger of drying up.

It's a good cautionary tale--wear socks in January, nothing good happens when you go out after midnight--but I think they're missing a bigger picture here. There's no more personal responsibility/adulthood anymore. A 27-year-old man is a kid who needs our sympathy because no one reminded him to put on socks before he went outside in the snow. Seriously!? And this gets him on TV?

If he gets a book deal, it's safe to say western civilization is dead.

Alright, I need more coffee.

(I will say that once I got past the "poor kid" crap, I did find learning about how they treat frostbite/hypothermia, in case I'm stupid enough to go out on the NY Thruway between now and the end of Lake Effect Snow Season, and two pairs of socks aren't enough.)

* I do not believe hardcore junkies or even teenagers shooting up heroin for the first time are going to read a government pamphlet, even if it's yellow. Although I guess I'm mocking the "wanna make a difference without doing any real work" nanny crowd more than the users here, aren't I?

Free advice for small local historical societies

If you're going to go through all the bother and expense of having a website, please put the days and hours you are open somewhere on that site. And if your site lists a phone number, your answering machine should list the days and hours you are open. "We are on our winter hours" does not help the tourist who has never been to your village--doesn't have a reason to go there, since you didn't give her one.

(And what's the deal with opening sites on June 1 instead of Memorial Day weekend?)

Meanwhile and unrelated: Onondaga County has a frost advisory for tomorrow morning. I realise frost at this time of year sucks for the miles of orchards south of town (and the Weather Service lies), but if this is "global warming", I want more of it!

Alright, now I have to find something else to do indoors--contra the Weather Service, I was awakened by heavy rain--that's actually open before June 1.

I love winter.

Wind off Lake Huron pushes ice onto shore (and not for the first time...):


Some actual information, which the CNN page doesn't give you.

Note to self: don't build so close to the water.

Change I can believe in

More snow fell during the past two winters in Milwaukee than at any time in the past century.*

I moved here in 2006. You're welcome. :-D

Meanwhile, change I don't believe in: Barry's going to tax all forms of energy to "save us" from "warming." Well, yeah, it's really to cripple what's left of the economy, make more people dependent on the government for their daily needs, and limit the freedoms of those few who aren't, but a spoonful of "save teh planet!" helps the central planning go down.

I wish I understood why so many people feel they need to be "saved" from the future, let alone that a bumbling jug-eared Marxist is their Savior. Oh, wait, he plays basketball and waxes his chest. *snort*


* Note that there are no records of yearly snowfall before the evil white people moved in. You can get some overall climate info from tree rings and oral tradition, but not "inches of snow in February." I'd love to know how much snow fell on Milwaukee during the last Maunder Minimum, compare it to snowfall since the sunspots went dead last year...

18 inches??

It's been blue skies at Radishhof all day, except for thirty seconds where we got four flakes I didn't even have to brush off my car because they melted in the sun.

Odd and unfair.

We're having a heat wave...

Well, comparatively. The ice on the inside of the inner pane has vanished, leaving only ice on the inside of the outer pane.

Yes, I know my windows are filthy. :P

Merry Christmas!

Difficult: The roadway is completely covered with precipitation. Accumulation is to the point that the roadway markings are completely obscured making it difficult to differentiate between the roadway and its surroundings. These conditions make travel very difficult. This is a hazardous environment. Some weather conditions can be severe enough that roadway treatments, such as salt or sand, will not work. Emergency vehicles and snow removal equipment may be called off of the roadway due to the conditions. In the event of an emergency, it may be impossible to get emergency vehicles to a scene.

My mother thinks I'm making this up to ruin her Christmas Eve. There is a special place in Hell for Norman Rockwell.

OTOH, I'm sure the kids would rather see Aunt Heather show up on Christmas Day than not at all. Aunt Heather certainly prefers to drive tomorrow instead of spending the night in a motel room in Dyersville waiting for Friday to roll around to get her car towed/fixed (Aunt Heather has already totalled enough cars on U.S. 20 for one lifetime).

So, what's there to do in Milwaukee on Christmas Eve Day in the snow?

Maybe I will relocate...

Global warming at work! Alert al-Gore!

Summer Snowstorm Kills 2 on Bavarian Mountaintop

My kind of climate. I took the cable car to the top, of course...

Third biggest hailstone!

Always click on the NOAA Public Information Statements. You never know what will be there.

Statement as of 5:00 PM CDT on June 17, 2008

... 3rd largest hailstone in state history occurred on June 7 2008...

This information is slightly delayed... and is from the severe
weather outbreak on June 7th of this year that affected much of
southern Wisconsin.

It has been determined that a 5 inch diameter hailstone fell
approximately 2 miles east-northeast of Delafield at about 435 PM on
June 7 2008. This was measured... and then confirmed by a photo
submission. The precise location was just west of Pewaukee
Lake... and just to the east of Highway 83 to the north of
naga-Waukee Gold course.

This hail report corresponds with other large hail reports from
Waukesha County that day... with a fair number of golfball... to just
shy of softball... sized reports being received.

The hardest hit area by large hail appears to be anywhere from
Oconomowoc to Delafield and Pewaukee... and then south to the west
side of Waukesha. This is approximated by the northwest quadrant of
Waukesha County.

The 5-inch diameter hailstone ranks as the 3rd largest in Wisconsin
history... based on available records. The largest was a 5.7 inch
diameter hailstone that fell on may 22 1921 on the north side of
Wausau /Marathon County/. The second largest was a 5.5 inch diameter
hailstone that fell... coincidentally... one year ago to the date of
the Delafield event on June 7 2007. This hailstone fell in Port
Edwards /Wood County/.

Here is a ranking of the top hail events... in terms of largest
diameters... on record in Wisconsin.

... size... ... location... ... County... ... date...
5.70 N side of Wausau Marathon may 22 1921
5.50 Port Edwards wood Jun 07 2007
5.00 2ene Delafield Waukesha Jun 07 2008
4.50 8ne Merrill Lincoln Jul 16 1997
4.50 4se Oakdale Monroe Jun 01 2000
4.50 1ne River Falls St. Croix Jun 19 1988
4.25 3nw Lake Mills Jefferson Apr 13 2006

4.00 multiple events listed in storm reports database

If anybody has video or pictures of hail stones equal to... or
greater than baseball size /2.75 inches in diameter/... they are
encouraged to relay them to the National Weather Service in
Sullivan. You can contact the webmaster account at:

W-mkx.Webmaster@noaa.Gov /all lowercase/

Now you can impress at your next cocktail party. Or something.

God has a sense of humor.

A casualty of powerful storms that hit the Kansas State University campus on Wednesday was the Wind Erosion Lab, which the university said was destroyed by an apparent tornado.

Heh heh.

While I'm ranting: "Normal" Snowfall ISN'T

I can't STAND this sort of shoddy misinformation:

So far this winter Milwaukee has notched 65.7 inches of snow. That's a wee bit over the normal of 33.9 inches.

THERE IS NO NORMAL. "Normal" precipitation as labeled by meterology forecasting companies is merely the average of a sliding 30-year period. So the "normal 33.9 inches" they speak of is the AVERAGE snowfall of years between 1971 and 2000. 5.5 feet very well could be statistically normal for Milwaukee. Yes, it's above an artificially-constrained average, but it's probably not statistically aberrant, especially if you include years before 1971.

Mostly I'm tired of people bitching about it, like they expect Wisconsin to be Alabama in February. It's still a free country for a few months, feel free to leave...

It could be colder.

I wish I had more time to study historical data. The Weather Underground (I get a kick out of the name being used for innocuous purpose) reports that this week in January Milwaukee was much colder in 1985, 1930, and 1888...and much much warmer in 1996, 1964, 1934, and 1906...

What I really want is a list of "highest low temps" and "lowest high temps" instead of just the record highs and lows.

In my life in the Midwest, I have many fond memories of highs below zero in January and February. It doesn't happen every place every year, but MLK weekend in 1994 Valpo cancelled classes due to highs below zero; I drove to VA during MLK weekend 1997 when it was below-zero in Indianapolis; I took a December final at ISU in 2000 when the air temp was -17F; 2004 there were highs below zero in Cedar Falls before the first snowfall (that was annoying); Super Bowl weekend last year was below-zero here and around zero in Indy...

This is a long way of saying "Winter is cold. BFD."

The part that surprises me is that it's slightly colder and windier in Milwaukee than in western Iowa, where my parents live. It's usually more extreme (heat, cold, wind) out there. Hrm.