Severe winter storm coming to Minnesota [video]

This kid's depiction of the weather forecast for Minnesota (as deciphered from Nova Scotia) is spot on. It sounds like something you'd hear/see on The Weather Channel, only more professional and in a tone which seems to match the warnings of peril and almost certain death that today's weather forecasts convey. I'm looking for more videos from this kid because his dire warnings of a sever winter storm are downright hysterical to watch.

Daylight saving time must be coming soon

As I woke up this morning the only thing I could think of was when exactly does daylight saving time begin? I know it used to fall on the first weekend of April because there was one year when we stayed up drinking all night so we would be awake for a super-early round of disc golf bright and early on a somewhat warm Sunday morning but we ended up going to breakfast instead. All told, the plan was obviously flawed but we at least made the effort to follow through with it.

But a few years ago the dates for the beginning and end of daylight saving time were adjusted. It started a few weeks earlier -- moving the time change into March, and ended a week later so finally Halloween would be a nighttime event like it was meant to be.

The amount of sunlight this morning, though, made me think that daylight saving time had to be near. Hell, I even heard a few birds chirping. Maybe that's because we've experienced virtually no winter this year here in Minnesota or maybe it's because it is legitimately sunny when I wake up now but I'm looking forward to the impending time change because, for some reason, I actually prefer getting ready for my day when it is still dark outside. Maybe it's the inner creeper in me or maybe it's just less jarring to wake up to darkness and let the light come on slowly via the rising sun.

Anyhow, daylight saving time has to be coming soon. Maybe it's St. Patrick's Day weekend. I'll find out soon enough because I bet it will be the top news story on the TV as s ome dopey anchor jokes about springing forward or being late for everything on the following day. Dopes.

The idiocy of Minnesota's schools

My day began in the small Minnesota River Valley city of LeSueur. Of course I had to drive there to begin with which sucked but driving back to my office in the metro sucked much more than I can even begin to describe here.

I busied myself, trapped behind a three-wide MNDot snowplow assault on U.S. Highway 169 for 20+ miles, by endlessly scanning through the FM radio dial. Stopping at one point, I heard a Mankato FM station (Hot 96.7) rattling off a few school closings. I was on the road heading back to my office between 9 and 10 AM and the majority of these school early releases being aired were before noon.

Assuming that most schools begin between 8 and 9 AM, this boils down to a nice half-day for kids in many parts of outstate Minnesota. The confusing part was that more than a few of these early closings were around 9:30 AM! Yeah, that means that after the wheels on the bus went 'round and 'round on roads that were already fairly shitty, they have to turn around 90 minutes later and slip and slide down barely visible country roads to take the little brats back home.

What the hell changed so much in a mere 90 minutes to change the mind of school administrators in these mainly small towns? Did the near-whiteout conditions become a total whiteout? Did they actually listen to a weather forecast and hear the part about another 6 or so inches of snow falling throughout the day complete with some wind to further fuck up the already sketchy situation?

The point is that these schools get at least some money for bringing the kids in to the buildings for even a partial day. And some money for the day is better than none. But isn't the safety of kids, which these school are entrusted with, the highest priority? Shouldn't safety trump money any day of the week? What happens when someone makes a bad call and sends the kids home too late and a bus rolls over on an icy, unplowed road and all 38 kids die? Wouldn't it have been a better call to keep the kids home if the weather already sucked before sunrise and was predicted to keep getting worse as the day dragged on? And, really, how many schools a mere one county south of the Twin Cities will actually stick it out and keep the kids in class for a full day?

But all of the Winter weather makes for interesting photos at MinnPics. Check out the stunning photos of Minnesota today!

That popping sound

If you haven't heard, it's cold here in Minnesota. It's so cold that my car, after not driving it for two days, barely started and it has a nearly new battery in it. But more disturbing than that is what the cold weather is doing to my house.

No, the frost on the inside of the windows isn't anything to worry about. That's par for the course in a 110 year-old house. It's the loud popping sounds we've been hearing. In the last two days I've heard no less than half a dozen frighteningly loud pops. It sounds like someone is in my attic firing off shotgun shells. I even joked today that it's only a matter of time until part of the roof falls in on us and finally puts us out of our misery.

But I guess it really isn't a joking matter. The facts are as follows: there is at least a foot of, at one time, heavy and wet snow stuck to every inch of my roof. My gutters suck (I have those joke-like almost Lego snap-together pieces of shit) and are likely full of ice which will only back further up my roof when the snow melts in early June. The neighbors have laboriously drug roof rakes across their snow-laden roofs but I'm one to let nature take its course. With my fingers crossed I can say that I haven't had any water issues thus far with my roof and I have easy access to it from my spacious attic so I hope I'm safe.

But if I am woke up by another shotgun-like pop I'll do something about it. Probably buy a pair of ear plugs.

If you make and keep only one resolution in 2010, resolve to visit MinnPics daily and bask in the glory of fabulous photos from all over Minnesota.

Christmas cancelled due to snowmageddon

Click to make the snowfall map bigger but the snowphoon, snowmageddon, jesusblizzard, snownami, snownado, hohosnow or whatever else people are tagging it as on Twitter is apparently coming just in time to fuck up your Christmas plans from Wisconsin west through the Dakotas. Of particular interest is Minnesota because that's where I live and even though I have to travel the whopping sum of ten miles on Christmas day I still have to make it in to my office tomorrow (Christmas Eve) and do what amounts to a ton of shopping - even if the Target in Brainerd is out of milk.

Supposedly I'll be shoveling 15-20 inches out here in the southwest Twin Cities but, like every other forecasted storm, I'll believe it when I'm shoveling my driveway and die of a massive heart attack from heaving piles of heavy, wet snow over the already too-tall piles lining my driveway and sidewalks.

Call it stubbornness but I have no desire to own a snowblower. Those things are like the anti-snow - a lot like owning a snowmobile and unlike a snowblower, my snow shovel has never had any issues starting in cold weather. Owning a snowblower pretty much insures that it won't snow and while for plenty that would be pretty awesome I like to see snow falling. Hey, if it's going to be ass-freezing cold it might as well snow to complete the winter experience because it is Minnesota after all.

So when you're housebound for the next few days under a thick blanket of snow, check out the year-end retrospective at MinnPics. The best of the best of 2009 in photographs.

Shopping and the weather in Minnesota

Sadly, my weekend plans involve shopping at some point. And by shopping, I mean sitting in the car while my old lady meanders through a variety of stores that hold absolutely no interest to yours truly. I don't mind shopping - if I'm by myself but if it's my old lady stopping every twelve feet to him and haw over something that's the polar opposite of what we set out to purchase - then we have a problem.

As of this past week, the weather, too, threw a bit of a wrench in to the relative ease of shopping. It's to be expected, each year the sudden change (read: snow) in the weather catches us off guard. I was hoping to push through to late January with a snowless winter so I wouldn't have to buy new tires for the car I inherited from my old lady. That didn't pan out with the somewhat unexpected showfall that blanketed the state earlier this week. With that came cold weather. Weather cold enough that stepping outside and trudging through a packed parking lot while dodging inconsiderate assholes who can't even be troubled to crane their necks backward before backing out of their parking spot at Mach 5 speed is a pain to say the least.

Factor in me pushing a stroller complete with a little girl who's still screaming because she is paying me back for strapping her in to her car seat through those earlier-mentioned parking lots which I forgot to mention are half-plowed at best and you can see why I have opted more and more to, like my dad, sit in the car while either waiting impatiently and scanning the radio dial or napping. More and more in this area I am turning in to my dad - bushy gray sideburns and bi-focals can't be far off now.

But what really chaps my ass is the fact that the closest reprieve from this fabulous, toe-numbing weather is about four months off. Throw in the forecast that I noticed for Saturday and you have a recipe rife for my head blowing completely off. See that shit?!? A LOW of 15 degrees - not entirely intolerable as I'm beginning to adjust to having permanently cold feet but that precipitation - a WINTRY MIX. How is that even possible? It's going to be a whopping fifteen degrees. That's an entire 17 degrees below freezing. A wintry mix? What? That's the kind of crap that makes me want to move to either Arizona or Canada. On one hand, you'd never have to deal with that crap - on the other hand the drivers in Canadia are so used to it that it wouldn't even phase them. But in the end I'll stick it out because I really don't plan on pushing a stroller through an asshole-filled parking lot anytime soon and with my new tires getting to work suddenly got a bit easier.

Now if only we can dodge that chance of a wintry mix on Saturday night. Oh, did I mention that it's a whoppingly-huge 20% chance? Which means that there's an 80% chance it WON'T happen? Why even mention it? Hell, on any given day there's a 20% chance I'll accidentally put on my old lady's panties while getting dressed but I don't post that prediction on a website - well until now.

Rather than complain about the weather constantly, I also, at time, revel in it. Check out the latest photos of Minnesota at MinnPics.

The art of winter driving

Face it - winter driving isn't easy. Especially if you're a Minnesotan. The crippling fear. The clenched white knuckles. The tense arms straining to hold the wheel steady. The soiled underwear from even the slightest unpredicted movement of your car as snow flakes wander aimlessly across the highway. The headache from seeing an endless stream of brake lights. It makes for a universally shitty day.

But why does it make for such a craptastic day? Why do even a few flurries turn us all into crippled invalids unable to drive even half of the speed limit?

It all boils down to varying levels of stupidity. There is the stupid driver creeping along at 25 miles per hour on the freeway. Then there's the stupid driver screaming like a bullet at 70 miles per hour on a two lane county road. There has to be some sort of happy medium between those two extremes. If not, I suppose that there's always the possibility that one (or both) will receive the Darwin Award.

But now that the snow seems to have ended outside my window, we've been given a reprieve. But we all know that there's a day coming - a perfect storm - when it will be snowing at 3 PM and just keep on snowing through the afternoon rush hour - making it last until 8 PM. It's coming and we all know it. I only hope that those unskilled drivers prepare. I hope that the stupid drivers up their intelligence. I hope that I get my front tires replaced.

I also hope that you'll check out MinnPics. A home for all things photographic about Minnesota that likes when you check it out.

The sun finally felt warm

On Monday I grilled. On our perfect 67 degree Monday, I grilled. The last time my gas grill saw the light of day was late October. Since that time it had been stored away in front of the lawnmower and next to the smoker in the utility shed attached to the garage. It's been a long 4 1/2 months. It seemed longer but after buying a huge family size package of ground beef (what size family needs 6 lbs.?) and knowing that Monday's weather was going to be the kind of early spring warmth that gives teenage boys erections in anticipation of swimsuit season, I saved one pound of ground chuck for the upcoming glorious Monday afternoon.

After speeding home, my nipples tingling in anticipation of the grand event, I pulled the grill from the garage and put it in its proper place on the patio and lit that bad boy.



Welcome to flavor country. These 1/2 lb. beauties that look like a Wendy's burger on steroids borrowed from Barry Bonds were nothing short of delicious. Grilled hamburgers, one of the many summertime treats I've missed. Welcome back spring, welcome back!

Spring is just around the corner for MinnPics as well. Check back frequently to see the seasons change in Minnesota.

Wow, it's snowing in MInnesota, everyone panic

Why in the holy hell do Minnesotans rustle themselves up into shear panic when snow starts magically falling from the sky. You'd swear that God himself were shitting cement blocks on us and that hunkering down in the basement was your only safe course of action. Alas, it's just snow.

But then there's the media, as MPR's Bob Collins pointed out, whipping everyone - not just in Minnesota but in the entire country - in to a frenzy. It's a bit of a mystery why The Weather Channel would have a live reporter in St. Paul chronicling what he must view as the end of the world but to the rest of the country let me just say that it is February and this is Minnesota. The temperature is below freezing once again and liquid precipitation turns to a solid state when that happens and the result is SNOW.

Now snow in Minnesota is a rather rare occurence. We only receive 4-5 feet of snow during an average winter. It sucks to clear from driveways, sidewalks, streets, road and even roofs but we're used to it because, well, we get 4-5 feet of snow each year.

Never, though, will I figure out why a typical late-winter snow storm in Minnesota packing - gasp - snow coupled with wind would warrant wall to wall news coverage.

One thing is sure, if I lose sight of the pine tree three feet outside my office window we're all screwed but until then I think we'll be safe. Slow down when driving because it's better to arrive a little bit late than a little bit dead.

Will MinnPics showcase the aftermath of The Storm? You'll just have to check it out to be sure.

The hobo furnace

Yeah, late October means just one thing in Minnesota. Cold weather is here for the next five months and that means heating your house. Lucky for me, our house is blessed with an old ass brick chimney in remarkably good condition.

Unfortunately it is connected to nothing. There is no fireplace, no wood stove, nothing. That sucks for us as we are forced to use natural gas supplied by the man to power our forced air furnace. Natural gas, in case you are Amish, went up about 50% this year and being that I am cheap frugal I am testing the limits of human endurance by surviving with only a space heater in the living room and one in the bedroom. So far, the temperature has only dipped to 58 degrees and yes, I know that running a space heater for a few hours uses -- in scientific terms -- a shitload of electricity but the gas and electricity are different bills and this is all about perception.

So far, it's been rather tolerable and we've sufficed with only having to throw on a sweatshirt. Tonight, though, was different. It is cold. It's already 36 degrees outside and with so much of this old house having no insulation in the walls, I brought up the idea of a fire. My old lady quickly squashed that dream being that house is built from wood. She seemed to think that a small fire in the corner of the living room would quickly grow in size. Damn sensibility.

Thus was born The Hobo Furnace.
If I can draw it, this thing will work. And if you notice, I am warm because I'm smiling and warming my hands over my new furnace. Suck on that doubters.

Check out MinnPics for stunning photograpjhy currently showcasing autumn in Minnesota.

The month of March is on notice

Tomorrow is March 27 and in Minnesota that can mean one of two things. It will either approach 60 degrees with a light breeze and crisp, blue skies or it will be 30 degrees with gobs of thick, wet, heavy snow piling up.

Of course due to the fact that we only had about six snowy weeks this winter, it will be the latter. Our existing snow in the Twin Cities are has already melted three times including the piles from last week's sloppy dumping but I think this is nature's way of getting eve. Sure, we had the coldest winter in a whopping seven years (that's right, shut your mouths about global warming being a crock because the coldest in seven years is like seeing the world's tallest midget -- nothing too special) but we had only about half of the normal snowfall.

I don't know about others in Minnesota or elsewhere but I am ready for this crap to end. I want my arms to breathe. I want to fling open some windows. I yearn to see buds on our barren trees. I want to be able to vacuum my car without dragging in yet more sand and sludge. I want to bitch about our hot and humid summers and wish it was cooler. I am ready for spring and the fact that I'm ordering my garden stuff this weekend only reaffirms that.

They said there would be rain

It was supposed to rain yesterday. To me, that first rain of the year marks the official arrival of spring. Oh, sure, the calendar says that spring is about a week away but our black farm fields and mostly barren lawns beg to differ.

Now normally, I am not one to get excited about rain. It's not nearly as fun as snow. No kids run outside in the raid and make mud angels or build gigantic mud men but here in Minnesota, the snow is a refreshing change of pace.

It seems that this year we were burdened with nothing more than two solid months of cold weather which deprived us of any additional snow. In fact, the weather nerds say that the greater Twin Cities area received about half of the normal amount of snow. That doesn't mean alot for cityslickers but it could spell ruin for farmers if they face a dry spring.

The rain, though, would have been welcome for other reasons. For one, it would begin to wash away the salt and sand that covers every paved surface in Minnesota. Rain would also aid in removing the solid sheet of ice that seems out to get me every time I stroll on to my driveway.

The ice wants to kill me. The roads want my shabby car to be filthy forever. Am I alone? Is it time for winter to give it up and head on down the road?

Raindrops keep falling on my head

As they usually do every three months or so, the seasons they are a changing.

This can be proven by the fact that on October 7th, just over a week ago, the temperature in this part of Minnesota reached about 90 degrees. This was followed up by a week of temperatures struggling to reach 50 degrees. and clouds that would make a Seattle transplant feel like they were home.

As I am writing this, the rain is coming down at a somewhat steady pace. It's not enough to run the car's wipers full time but it's the type of rain that your mom assumes would lead to a mean case of pneumonia is you were thick headed enough to venture outside for any amount of time without a proper rain slicker. Hell, I finally bought my first zip-up sweatshirt (a fashion statement in its own right) in more than 15 years about a month ago during our first cold snap. I had become accustomed to going from short sleeves to long sleeves to long sleeves with my minimal winter jacket. Yeah, I've even retired my winter ski jacket (no, I don't ski) except for the rare occasion when I am shoveling show for hours at a time which happened exactly twice last winter.

Maybe this year's abnormally cold (or is it just normal) fall weather will lead to an actual winter. Don't get me wrong. I like a couple of good snowstorms but I also enjoy not freezing the skin off my thin bones. I enjoy not having to get a second job to pay my natural gas bill to heat this drafty, cavernous villa we call home.

And for the time being, I enjoy some autumn sunshine because all this rain does is tear the few remaining leaves off the trees leaving behind a soggy leaf carpet on my lawn that I will have to take care of in some way if it stops raining before Halloween.