Thursday 9 January 2014

Meanwhile, here at home it's high summer...

The Firstborn, when a reporter, was always a little bored by having to do weather stories - but, by crikey, they can make for some astonishing copy, and the current Polar Vortex bringing sub-zero temperatures to every single state of the US - even Florida! even Hawaii! - is deserving of its world-wide coverage. (I can't help but notice though that there's very little noise coming out of Canada, despite its being even further north, and colder. Presumably, being more used to snow and such, they're - politely - rolling their eyes at all the fuss below the border and are just stoically getting on with life.)
As some of the cities featured in the news are places I'll be visiting later this year, I've been paying particular attention, and wondering whether Chicago in April will be anything close to spring-like by then. Probably I'll pack the merinos just in case: when it's too cold for even their zoo's polar bear to venture outside, it's hard to imagine the city ever getting warm again. The photos of the frozen shores of Lake Michigan are genuinely awesome, though, and beautiful, too. When I'm standing in Millennium Park taking my obligatory photo of the Cloud Gate sculpture, I hope I'll have to work to remember it capped with snow and reflecting an empty, icy expanse.
It seems no time at all since we were in Alaska swanning about on our Silversea cruise back in June, when the skies were blue and the days warm and sunny - but still there was plenty of snow on the tops, the glaciers looked robust and there were lots of icebergs bobbing about. Now it must be a white, white world, sea and land and sky all merged: good reason for the bright colours of the houses in towns like Ketchikan and Juneau; and for all those slightly shocking shops filled with furry pelts, coats, boots and hats. If I lived there, even I might be forced to look beyond my merino thermals.

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