METEOROLOGY

It is amazing. Yesterday we had a cloudy, but warm, day. It was 54F. at 8:00am and 65F. at 8:00pm. This morning it is only 30F. with a projected high of 35F. and a winter storm advisory. Time to batten the hatches, I think. I do need to run out for a prescription refill, which I will do as soon as I finish this and put the kitchen dishes in the sink.

This sort of weather is typical of South Central Kansas: balmy one day, frigid the next and warm again a couple of days later. We don't normally get much snow, but ICE...

I use the word typical advisedly. When we moved to Kansas 35 years ago, people who mentioned the weather always would say, no matter what the weather was: "But that's not normal for this time of year." People are still saying this; ergo, there is no normal weather in SCKansas.

One meteorological phenomenon that is constant is the wind. Indeed, Kansas is named for a Native American tribe whose collective name translates as "People of the South Wind." I sometimes joke that there are only three days a year without at least a 10mph wind, and those days we get our own smog instead of Oklahoma City's.

The word of the day for December 27, 2008 is "meteorology" — Pronunciation: \ˌmē-tē-ə-ˈrä-lə-jē\
Function: noun
Etymology: French or Greek; French météorologie, from Middle French, from Greek meteōrologia, from meteōron + -logia -logy
Date: 1620
1 : a science that deals with the atmosphere and its phenomena and especially with weather and weather forecasting. 2 : the atmospheric phenomena and weather of a region.

Our quote for the day is from Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. "Storm Warnings" (l. 12–14). Norton Introduction to Poetry, The. J. Paul Hunter, ed. (3d ed., 1986) W. W. Norton & Company:

Weather abroad
and weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

;^)

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