What's under that snowbank?
Friday, December 11, 2009
Archives: It's Not Even Winter Yet
Wednesday, December 9, 2009: 3:15 a.m. I wake to the sounds of young men in the street bellowing the F word in a tone immediately associated with a six-pack or several. We live close to the university campus, where more houses than not are home to undergraduates making their first foray into independent living. By day they lend a cheerful energy to the neighborhood; by night their werewolf selves emerge, triggered by parties celebrating football games, Fridays, significant barometric changes, anything at all. On this particular night, Madison's sky is lit with a full moon and falling snow—so much snow that classes have already been canceled for the first time in nearly 20 years. It will be a long night.
I slide out of bed and peek out the window, Gladys Kravitz style. It takes a few moments to make sense of the scene on the breast of the snow. Yes, there are the expected half-dozen youths, without coats (drunken oblivion? high metabolism? rebellion against their mothers?). But what are they doing, dandling shovels down there and huddling in conference, alternately whispering (always a bad sign) and bursting forth with mirthful F's...? My eyes drift a foot or two behind them to a six-foot-high white mound along the curb. Ah.
I crawl back into bed, thankful that my own car is safely stowed in a locked garage.
Madison made the national news the next day with its 17-inch dump of snow. CNN video clips showed hundreds of university students on Bascom Hill in the snowball fight of the century. In a grand finale that is the stuff of folk and fairy tales, they rolled a giant snowball down Park St. Perhaps my local band of exuberants were among them, or maybe they were still at home, recovering or hiding or both. In any case, the season has begun, and we have five months to go before we see the ground again. Before then, I vow to have those eager boys and their shovels over. We have a driveway in need of snow excavation, and some killer macaroni and Wisconsin cheese to offer in return. Party on!
The Crime Scene in Broad Daylight:
What's under that snowbank?
What's under that snowbank?
Archives: December 2008
Two years ago, when I announced I was moving to Wisconsin, my friend David emailed back:
Hello??? Two words:
WIN TER Today is December 26, 2008. Winter is only a few days under way, and we have more than 36 inches of snowfall here in Madison. This is more snow than in any previous December. And it almost breaks the record set in February 1994 for any one-month period. The most astonishing comparison, though, is the average December snowfall: a dusting of 9.7 inches. In a land where schools don’t close, we’ve already had two snow days with this quadrupled measure of the stuff. It is no exaggeration to claim to have shoveled more this December than in the preceding half-century. WIN TER, indeed. Here is what we’ve learned about this season as we begin our third. First: snow. Snow is not a liquid in a fleeting crystallized state. It is a solid object. Once it falls out of the sky, it stays. It piles up, like dirt. In Virginia we simply waited a day or two, and it would melt away. But there is no melting in Wisconsin. We don’t expect to see 32 degrees again until March. So it gets shoveled, snow-blowed (that’s Wisconsin terminology), and bulldozed to any spot not occupied by a building, a car, a tree. Mounds become mountain ranges, with elevation statistics, flanking sidewalks, curbs, medians, driveways, parking lots. Dump trucks come and haul it away, out to the country, but they can’t keep up. If you didn’t hire someone last July to take care of your snow this winter, you have a problem. Second: cold. Einstein might have lived in Wisconsin at some point. Wisconsin winters inspire the pondering of physics, particularly such concepts as absolute zero and relativity. For example, we can all appreciate the difference between 72 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit. At 72, all of life is teeming and blooming and flowing, the windows are open, we are bare of head and foot, we are skipping and sipping prosecco, molecules are dancing uninhibited. At 32, those molecules shudder to a halt as water turns to ice. The furnace is fired up, we bundle up, living things are dormant or dead or burrowed or flown south. That’s the difference forty degrees makes. Last week, when we were looking for a Christmas tree, the temperature was minus 8. That’s still another forty ticks down the thermometer. Visualize the difference between 72 and 32, then try to imagine what forty degrees colder than 32 could be like. You must cover every inch of skin. You must have a long puffy down coat and flannel-lined jeans. You are wearing gloves inside of mittens, Smart Wool socks inside of Ugg boots, one of those geeky ski masks, and a fur-lined aviator hat with ear flaps. You wear glasses so your eyeballs don’t crack. It hurts to breathe—not just in your nose, but deep in your chest. You understand that you could die. Last year, schools did not close for snow—not once—but they did close for cold. You can’t have kids standing outside at the bus stop when the wind chill is minus 30. And yet. The sun shines, the sky is blue. We cross-country ski through the arboretum or the golf course or down our own street. School classrooms have two sleds apiece for use during recess. Neighborhoods maintain skating ponds. Madison’s lakes are dotted with ice-fishing huts. Lawns are decorated with snowpeople and snow forts. Even grown-ups can’t resist lobbing a snowball or two. Then we all go inside and eat soup. There is nothing like the deep muffled peace that settles with a fresh snowfall, the sense of a cocoon wrapped around the world. At night, the beauty of a shimmery blanket, especially when holiday lights are twinkling, makes you want to sing something reverential. In facing the bitter cold, we discover the gifts of community and contemplation, a reaching both outward and in. WIN TER. It is worthy of two words.
WIN TER Today is December 26, 2008. Winter is only a few days under way, and we have more than 36 inches of snowfall here in Madison. This is more snow than in any previous December. And it almost breaks the record set in February 1994 for any one-month period. The most astonishing comparison, though, is the average December snowfall: a dusting of 9.7 inches. In a land where schools don’t close, we’ve already had two snow days with this quadrupled measure of the stuff. It is no exaggeration to claim to have shoveled more this December than in the preceding half-century. WIN TER, indeed. Here is what we’ve learned about this season as we begin our third. First: snow. Snow is not a liquid in a fleeting crystallized state. It is a solid object. Once it falls out of the sky, it stays. It piles up, like dirt. In Virginia we simply waited a day or two, and it would melt away. But there is no melting in Wisconsin. We don’t expect to see 32 degrees again until March. So it gets shoveled, snow-blowed (that’s Wisconsin terminology), and bulldozed to any spot not occupied by a building, a car, a tree. Mounds become mountain ranges, with elevation statistics, flanking sidewalks, curbs, medians, driveways, parking lots. Dump trucks come and haul it away, out to the country, but they can’t keep up. If you didn’t hire someone last July to take care of your snow this winter, you have a problem. Second: cold. Einstein might have lived in Wisconsin at some point. Wisconsin winters inspire the pondering of physics, particularly such concepts as absolute zero and relativity. For example, we can all appreciate the difference between 72 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit. At 72, all of life is teeming and blooming and flowing, the windows are open, we are bare of head and foot, we are skipping and sipping prosecco, molecules are dancing uninhibited. At 32, those molecules shudder to a halt as water turns to ice. The furnace is fired up, we bundle up, living things are dormant or dead or burrowed or flown south. That’s the difference forty degrees makes. Last week, when we were looking for a Christmas tree, the temperature was minus 8. That’s still another forty ticks down the thermometer. Visualize the difference between 72 and 32, then try to imagine what forty degrees colder than 32 could be like. You must cover every inch of skin. You must have a long puffy down coat and flannel-lined jeans. You are wearing gloves inside of mittens, Smart Wool socks inside of Ugg boots, one of those geeky ski masks, and a fur-lined aviator hat with ear flaps. You wear glasses so your eyeballs don’t crack. It hurts to breathe—not just in your nose, but deep in your chest. You understand that you could die. Last year, schools did not close for snow—not once—but they did close for cold. You can’t have kids standing outside at the bus stop when the wind chill is minus 30. And yet. The sun shines, the sky is blue. We cross-country ski through the arboretum or the golf course or down our own street. School classrooms have two sleds apiece for use during recess. Neighborhoods maintain skating ponds. Madison’s lakes are dotted with ice-fishing huts. Lawns are decorated with snowpeople and snow forts. Even grown-ups can’t resist lobbing a snowball or two. Then we all go inside and eat soup. There is nothing like the deep muffled peace that settles with a fresh snowfall, the sense of a cocoon wrapped around the world. At night, the beauty of a shimmery blanket, especially when holiday lights are twinkling, makes you want to sing something reverential. In facing the bitter cold, we discover the gifts of community and contemplation, a reaching both outward and in. WIN TER. It is worthy of two words.
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