Kentucky Brown Grass

Utah went from a super-warm and dry winter to the wettest May in recorded history.  But then summer hit.
Boom!
Hot and dry.
But, as I noticed driving about to run errands a couple of days ago, a lot more people have been following the local water guidelines than in past summers.  All around, the grass is greenish-brown, as people water just enough to keep the grass from dying completely.  I even passed a cemetery that was far less than lush.  And that's good.
Brown is in in SLC.

Herniated Disc + Wet Snow Left By Snow Plow = 1st Sick Day In Years

Yeah, I'm home today resting my back.  I guess I'd had so little pain for a couple of years that I'd forgotten I was no longer invincible.
Snow: 1 Me: 0
Yeah, I'm also slightly grumpy about it because it will now take months before it's back to where it was just yesterday.  Grrr....

The only thing I don't feel bad about is that my students aren't missing anything today.  They're scheduled for standardized testing YET AGAIN, and, although I do feel bad because this means another English teacher had to swap classes with my substitute because a sub isn't allowed to give the tests, the kids wouldn't be learning anything today anyway.  They don't learn anything on standardized test days.
Thus, if I have to be out of school, at least it happened on what is pretty much a wasted day anyway.  (And yet lawmakers and the public demand more and more tests!  If they're going to do that, I think they need to add days back into the school year so that we can still teach.)

Where Am I, Cincinnati?

We had an ice storm today.  That NEVER happens in Salt Lake.
We're in the middle of the worst temperature inversion since 1982 (which was worse by far), today was the first day to get UP to freezing in weeks, and the air quality resembles that of a casino in the 1970s.  But today it rained -- because it was warm enough to do that above the inversion.  Unfortunately, when the rain hit the cold air below the inversion, it didn't shift to snow; it just froze.
The roads, the sidewalks, and everyone's windshields turned to sheets of ice.  Cars were sliding off the roads everywhere and getting to school was like watching goats with skates strapped to their hoofs.
By the time I got home this evening, the driveway looked like someone had hosed it down and let it freeze.  I seriously had ice half an inch thick in several areas.  It took me 45 minutes and ten pounds of ice melt (not an exaggeration) to get it to the point where it was safe to drive my car into the garage.
I hope it's not that bad again in the morning because I'm nearly out of ice melt now!

And Yet More Snow

Another 3-4 inches on my driveway this morning.  That makes roughly 28 inches in my yard -- all from one storm!
However, I think it seems to have let up now and might actually be stopping.
Oddly, the ski resorts didn't get all that much, from what I hear from my ski-fan neighbor.

Still Snowing

The snow has not let up  in roughly 30 hours.  The mounds of snow shoveled from people's driveways are now several feet high.  Residential streets -- if they have been plowed at all -- have been narrowed to one lane.
I shoveled snow higher than my knees this morning, then snow above my ankles this afternoon when I got home from school, and another couple of inches had fallen by the time I arrived home after an evening outing.
I noticed a tree in the backyard that really needed to be shaken free of the extra weight, lest it collapse, so I trudged into the yard with a rake.  Afterward, I measured to where the snow came on my pants: just over 2 feet.  That's quite a bit for one storm.

Oh, Snow.

Oh dear.
So much snow overnight.
I'll have to shovel twice just to get out this morning: once to get the worst of it off, then again just before I'm ready to leave for school so as to drive over as little of it as possible (frozen snow on the driveway = not a good thing).
Then the roads will be horrid, not just with snow, but with idiots who aren't properly equipped to drive in it.

Cold

So, Wednesday morning, when the alarm went off at 4:15 AM, I awoke with the memory that I had turned the heating system off in my relo before the holidays (when the temperature was in the 50s F.).  Oh my.
I rushed to leave the house by 6:15 (earlier than usual) and fought surprisingly bad traffic all the way to school.  (I had no idea the traffic would be so bad at that time of morning, but it was worse than at the time I usually leave for school.)
On the way, I had the radio on, and the DJ (John Carter, one of my longtime favorite DJs in the area) said, "Welcome to the Wednesday that feels like Monday!"  He was right.
I arrived at my relo at 6:35 AM.  It was 24 degrees F. in the room.  More than an hour later, when school began, I still had to make my 1st period kids get their coats to wear to class.
Believe me; I did not turn the programed heat off that night.
Yesterday, when I arrived at school (at 7:00 AM), my room was a nice 65 degrees (PLENTY warm once you get it filled with 35 sweating adolescents), the thermometer in my car read 4 degrees F.
Yeah, 4.  Gotta love a temperature inversion.

I recall that when I was living in Scotland, there was one day in January where the temperature dipped down to 0 degrees centigrade/ 32 F.  I cannot tell you how many people bothered to tell me that day that it was "literally freezing!"  Yes, it was.  And I laughed every time they told me.
Finally, one lady was aghast that I wasn't stunned by the freezing temperature.  I explained it to her this way:  "When the temperature gets UP to freezing in Salt Lake in January, we tend to think of it as 'getting warm.'"
And, of course, I know this is nothing compared to places like Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Still, I don't mind the cold.  I can always layer on more clothes to keep warm -- unlike the extreme Utah summer heat where one cannot peel off layers of skin to cool down.  And cold keeps people quieter.  It's peaceful, which I really appreciate.

Predicting Temperature Inversions

A temperature inversion occurs in the Salt Lake Valley when cold, dirty air gets trapped under warmer air.  If there is no wind or a storm, the inversion can last for weeks.  Snow doesn't melt, the air gets difficult to breathe, fog builds up and crystalizes on everything, and it stays bitter cold.  I recall one winter when I was 16 when the inversion didn't lift for roughly a month; some days we couldn't even see across the street clearly.

Well, today in the Salt Lake Tribune, this article claims there is now a center that can predict these inversions a month in advance.
But most Salt Lake residents have always been able to predict temperature inversions.  We call it "January."

Autumn Cannot Arrive Soon Enough

Yes, I live in a desert.  I know this.  And, really, I'm fine with the whole concept of "desert" right up through about 90 degrees.  After that, I long for Scotland with increased fervor.
Let me just say that a heavy cloud cover came in this evening --- and the temperature DROPPED to 94.
Yeah.
My dad went to the grocery store, and his car thermometer registered 109 all the way there and back again.
I went to a doctor's appointment at about the same time.  My car thermometer registered 104 all the way there and 105 all the way back.
But the real joy was returning to the car AFTER the doctor appointment.  The car had been in the sun on black top for one hour.  The car temperature? 122 F.  Yeah, that's toasty.
We're going to be in triple digits all this week now.  These are the times I long to live in a place where you don't break a sweat just walking from room to room.  Ugh.

Hot Enough To...

So, how hot is it in Utah this week?
Well, thanks to the amazing efforts of our firefighting crews, we are now down to just EIGHT wildfires in the state.  (I'm not being sarcastic here.  The firefighters are amazing.  The idiots who are still shooting fireworks and shooting bullets at targets in these tinderbox conditions ought to be made to fight the fires they start.)
We haven't had a drop of rain in well over a month now, and the temperature has been reaching the mid-nineties for days on end.
It's hot, smoky, and completely miserable.  Sleeping in weather like this is darn-nigh impossible.
But just how hot and dry is it?
Let me give you some perspective, for those of you who don't live in a desert.
Summer for school teachers is the time to do all those unpleasant tasks that build up during the year.  And today I decided to scrub down the bathroom blinds, as they get grosser than any of the blinds in the house because dust sticks to them when they're moist and can't be shaken off later.  I had bath towels destined for the wash, so I put one of them down in the bathtub so I wouldn't scratch the porcelain with the blinds as I scrubbed them.  I then put an inch or so of soapy water in the tub, scrubbed the blinds, drained, put it clean water, rinsed them, shook them out a bit, and took them outside to finish drying.  That left me with a SOAKING wet, thick, heavy bath towel in the tub. I didn't even wring it out, I just scooped it into a bucket and took it outside also, as I wasn't ready to do that load of wash yet.
I spread the soaked towel over some dry grass and left it.
One hour later, yes, ONE hour later, the bath towel was completely dry except for one corner fold which was slightly damp.
That's how hot and dry Salt Lake City is today people, hot enough to cook a soaked towel into a flat board in one hour.