What is your weather today?

[RicinYakima]

Jet stream just south of us now, over the Columbia River. Was 18* when I got up this morning and listed high will be about 33* and light rain (less than 0.5"). Jet stream heading north tomorrow, so will be warming all day today with low of 33* and high of 50* tomorrow. Snow in the mountains for the next three days! Hoorah.

 

[Glaciers]

fiver, do you find that, I dunno, the insularity of where you live, creates a distorted world view? I watch very little TV and bitch about it all the time, I've turned off the news and sports. We live on a lane and a half wide town road that runs 3.2 miles between two County Roads. There are three towns each about 15 miles away, in a triangle, the largest is our County seat with 5,000 people, many of whom I disagree with. There are a little over 11,000 people in our County and the population has been in decline since 1911. We see half a dozen vehicles in a day almost all known to us. Then, I went on vacation to Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Frankly, I couldn't wait to get home. It's a freak show out there, a zoo, and in Winter that's place old farts go in Winter. In a few weeks the Spring Break Berserkers will arrive, and it will get worse.
I occasionally drive through our own little slice of bedlam, Wisconsin Dells, and Fort Walton Beach and Destin are similar, only bigger.
Anyway, I now understand why TV commercials are the way the are. The demographic foolishly spending money on crap is their target audience and the marketing people are so damned afraid of offending any little fringe group. The world away from my little rural universe is populated by whack-a-doodles with 2" long fake nails, fake eye lashes, cottage cheese butts at least an axe handle wide, mincing along on goofy shoes.
Our remoteness and lack of attractions and services is delaying the invasion of the riff raff long enough for me to eke out the remainder of my years.
Isolation can be a good thing.

Well Lynn you described life in the wild very well. I’m meaning I my case the wild is the World outside of our Homestead. While Karyn and I live in quiet and I mean quiet, it’s a crazy world down in the lower 48 states and even some places up here. There are still pockets of sanity all over, the trick is to find them and drive around the crazies. Remember lock the doors and drive.
I guess I’m thinking of the road trip that Karyn and I are taking starting next month. Driving from Alaska to Washington State, then to kids and grandchildren in Oregon, from there to Salt Lake City to pick up our new to us travel trailer. From there headed in a Southerly direction tempted with a heavy easterly influence. Probably to eastern Texas or beyond for the Great American Eclipse.
But in the planning our travels we have studied our maps (paper mays, the real thing) from here to there, to lay out a route that goes around the big places. Alternative routes, tempered with weather considerations. Trying to keep to the 2 lanes were reasonable.
It is crazy out there, but a person has to find those islands of quiet sanity hopefully somewhat forgotten by the masses. Makes you remember why a person lives in places like here in Alaska and Wisconsin. Although plenty of craziness in parts of Wisconsin. But easy to avoid those places. We took our Motorhome from Washington to Wisconsin a few years ago traveling on Highway #2 once in Wisconsin all we had to do was turn right on County Road Z, then left on County Road M, then left and right, couldn’t find a road going southeast to save my life. But did manage to miss the crazy stuff.
Karyn’s family is from Greenwood and a few other Wisconsin small towns.

But traveling to the craziness certainly makes you appreciate home.

 

[Winelover]

It's currently 79* with still 1.5 hours till noon! The forecasted high is a sunny 85* but very windy. Probably set a record, this afternoon.

 

[Rick H]

60 degrees and sunny. West winds 10-15 mph. A very nice late February day.

 

[Glaciers]

-13 below right now warming up to zero.
-25 tomorrow with a high of -5 below.
Must be winter.

 

[Rick]

Winter? Na, not at 84 degrees, 34% humidity and bright sun.

 

[Winelover]

We have Red Flag Warnings out till 8 PM. Low humidity (20-25%) with high SW winds gusting to 45 mph.

 

[Cadillac Jeff]

I had 67 today...
Thunder storm tonight, single digits & snow tomorrow...so they say???

 

[fiver]

Thanks, my topo map shows I could avoid the interstate and go down the deserted valley to the east. I was hoping there was a way thru Bancroft to avoid all the elevation change.

yeah you can go around the pass through Bancroft... if it ain't snowing.
the road is about crap though, so you gotta be prepared to do a lot of swerving, then once you go through Bancroft the road is a roller coaster ride to the junction on 34. [stay straight when you hit town otherwise you add another 15 miles to the trip going back to 30]
easier than going over the summit, but another 25 miles out of the way.

just take the first left when you leave Lava.

 

[fiver]

fiver, do you find that, I dunno, the insularity of where you live, creates a distorted world view? I watch very little TV and bitch about it all the time, I've turned off the news and sports. We live on a lane and a half wide town road that runs 3.2 miles between two County Roads. There are three towns each about 15 miles away, in a triangle, the largest is our County seat with 5,000 people, many of whom I disagree with. There are a little over 11,000 people in our County and the population has been in decline since 1911. We see half a dozen vehicles in a day almost all known to us. Then, I went on vacation to Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Frankly, I couldn't wait to get home. It's a freak show out there, a zoo, and in Winter that's place old farts go in Winter. In a few weeks the Spring Break Berserkers will arrive, and it will get worse.
I occasionally drive through our own little slice of bedlam, Wisconsin Dells, and Fort Walton Beach and Destin are similar, only bigger.
Anyway, I now understand why TV commercials are the way the are. The demographic foolishly spending money on crap is their target audience and the marketing people are so damned afraid of offending any little fringe group. The world away from my little rural universe is populated by whack-a-doodles with 2" long fake nails, fake eye lashes, cottage cheese butts at least an axe handle wide, mincing along on goofy shoes.
Our remoteness and lack of attractions and services is delaying the invasion of the riff raff long enough for me to eke out the remainder of my years.
Isolation can be a good thing.

we are quite insulated during the winter and spring.
summer time is tourist time since we are pretty much the gateway to Yellowstone for almost everyone coming in from the south, or mid california
they are easy enough to avoid since they rarely stray off the main highway.

an insulated view?
does sitting in the high school parking lot like 50' from the front door chatting with the sheriff while loading a couple of AR-15 magazines count as insulated??
it's kind of changing, but there's a strong religious contingent here that's pretty darn firearms & prepper oriented.

you have to want to live here, the snow and cold keeps the riff-raff out, or runs off the summer visitors that think they wanna stay for the scenery.
the house next to me and the one across the street kept on having those types coming and going every year or two at most until a couple of locals finally bought them.

 

[JWinAZ]

Then, I went on vacation to Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Frankly, I couldn't wait to get home.

They get some weather there, flying in after a hurricane, one looks down and wonders if blue roofs are the new fashion. Until you realize that those are tarps covering holes that the wind blew away. And talk about hot and humid!

I started traveling there for work in the early '90s. Kind of a sleepy place then, and not too bad except for spring fling. It has always been a "red-neck riviera" with lots of craziness. The growth since then has been incredible, and hasn't helped.

 

[JonB]

I am in a different kind of isolated area. Living in "Small Town Minnesota" as I like to put it, is more like living in the past, compared to the craziness of today's Urban areas throughout the nation. Most of the small towns in the flat, farm intensive part of Minnesota are similar, quiet and mostly good neighbor type people...no tourists and no "berserkers"-as L Ross puts it, they seem to have congregated in the larger cities with tall buildings or mid-sized Cities with a college to bring the craziness to town. Now, I say all that, but I am only 50 miles to the center of the largest craziest city in MN and 'near' the largest in the 5 state region.

Back to topic:
1" of snow this evening and Big wind and cold tonight. Tomorrow, I have plans to go with a friend to buy him a used ebike from a berserker in the metro area, I hope the roads aren't iced up...High of 20º tomorrow.

 

[L Ross]

I am in a different kind of isolated area. Living in "Small Town Minnesota" as I like to put it, is more like living in the past, compared to the craziness of today's Urban areas throughout the nation. Most of the small towns in the flat, farm intensive part of Minnesota are similar, quiet and mostly good neighbor type people...no tourists and no "berserkers"-as L Ross puts it, they seem to have congregated in the larger cities with tall buildings or mid-sized Cities with a college to bring the craziness to town. Now, I say all that, but I am only 50 miles to the center of the largest craziest city in MN and 'near' the largest in the 5 state region.

Back to topic:
1" of snow this evening and Big wind and cold tonight. Tomorrow, I have plans to go with a friend to buy him a used ebike from a berserker in the metro area, I hope the roads aren't iced up...High of 20º tomorrow.

Is Garrison Kieler a neighbor?

 

[RicinYakima]

I have driven through Spencer, IA, several times over the years pulling the 5th wheel. The city is like a dose of the 1950's. There were not tattoo parlors, people planted flowers in the divider on the highway. Bought food and stopped north of town a few miles for lunch and walk the dogs. 25 Harleys pulled in with us to use the restrooms at the area. With my 1911 behind my vest got to meet some of them. They were doing a memorial ride for one of their members. They sat at the tables and had prayer before eating.

I could live there except for the winters and cold.

 

[JonB]

Is Garrison Kieler a neighbor?

The "person" lives in St. Paul. The Radio Character lives on Lake Wobegone, which would be in the lake region/tourist part of Minnesota, likely close to the Iron range where most of the scandihoovian's live...lot's of berserkers there.

 

[JonB]

SNIP>>>
The city is like a dose of the 1950's.

The small town next over from mine, had a Cafe with the signage that only had one word "EAT"
They were open from 5am until 1pm, serving only breakfast and lunch...they closed some time back.

 

[fiver]

ours is open to 2ish.
order what you want, eat what you get.

funny thing here is you don't smell coffee when you walk in.

 

[Rick]

ours is open to 2ish.
order what you want, eat what you get.

funny thing here is you don't smell coffee when you walk in.

And you stayed?

 

[fiver]

i like,,, love the smell of coffee, i really like the taste of coffee,, heck i can even make great coffee.

i don't drink hot coffee more than 1 maybe 2 times a year.
if you seen me make a cold milk chocolate coffee bout noon every day you'd wonder what the hell i was doing.

 

[L Ross]

I have read of 60° temperature drops. Usually in tales from the 1800's where ill prepared amateur buffalo hunters were lucky enough to freeze to death before being lashed to their wagon wheels and burned too death by justifiably outraged natives who really needed the buffalo.
Or the legendary "Blue Northers" of Texas cattle drive tales. The same drives that were really responsible for the demise of the buffalo herds.
I never thought I'd live to see one. I was feeling enough better yesterday afternoon I went for a walk of about oh, 1,400 yards in the beautiful 72° weather. I returned so frisky and filled with dismay that I was not out in my new from last Summer, Ultimate Fishing Machine, (hereafter referred to as the UFM), that I started re-installing all of the accessories I removed for Winter. At 3:49 pm a blast of unwelcome Northerly wind hurled open the side pedestrian door of my pole shed and rudely announced a change was en route.
I shut down operations and repaired to my recliner to further enjoy my Covid/Pneumonia recovery. When I went to bed after Perry Mason at 9:00 pm it was 40°. At 3:34 am it was 16° and at dawn it was a bone chilling 11° and still is. If that is not bizarre enough, tomorrow's forecast is for a high of 52°.