Coldest Day of the Year

Brrrr, it's cold out there today boys and girls. Doesn't matter if you are in Bangor, Maine or Atlanta, Georgia. Today was one of the coldest days in a long time over a wide swath of the country. Here in the NoVa (Northern Virginia) suburbs of Washington DC the high temperature was 17 degrees.

Now I know all you people out there with zip codes like 02492 and 04938 think I am a pansy for writing about a temperature of 17 degrees. That's balmy you say! But temperature is all relative to what you are used to. The normal high temperature here on January 16th is 41 degrees, so a high of 17 is pretty much unheard of. In fact, the last time we had a day this cold was February 4, 1996 - 13 years ago - when the mercury also topped out at 17 degrees.

I actually remember that day as a matter of fact. I had only been in DC for about 5 weeks and so 17 degrees didn't phase me a bit then. I actually went sightseeing downtown that day and walked all around the mall. Here's a pic in fact.



The ironic thing is that while much of the United States in in the deep freeze Alaska is having record high temperatures this week. Temperatures have been in the 40s and 50s in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness. Places like Denali National Park and Fairbanks, Alaska have set record high temperatures for the MONTH of January this week. All time records there have been shattered not by one or two degrees but by 10 to 15 degrees.

It's not unusual for it to get cold in DC, we have a few days every year where the temps don't get out of the 20s. The weird thing is we don't have any snow this time around. In fact, we haven't had any measureable snow all winter. We got a dusting one evening back in December but that is it. That simply means that we are due. Hopefully it won't all come at once, in March. That would totally suck.

Mood: Frostbitten

Song of the Day:

"We'll run away together. We'll spend some time forever. We'll never feel bad anymore."

- Island In The Sun

Weezer

Global Warming Stat of the Day:

There is enough water frozen in Antarctica to raise sea level by 160 feet. (Yowzah!!!)

It's Ironic:

That the only thing the 'prevent defense' used in football prevents is winning.