Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Sea Smoke


So the trip to the ancestral grounds didn't come off this past weekend. While the weather here was not so bad either on Friday or on Saturday, the homeland received more than a foot of snow. So delaying that trip to another time was actually a smart move.

Friday and early Saturday were actually pretty nice here in Little Rhody. Late Saturday we started seeing some sleet which turned to light snow. After getting about an inch of the white stuff, the rains came. Heavy downpour early Sunday with peals of thunder off in the distance. It woke me up, I thinking that perhaps the rain had turned to snow, thought the noise to be a snowplow rumbling down the street. Nope, thunder.

Very rainy Sunday until the afternoon when I was watching a bit of football. Then it started to get cold, bitter cold, Vermont cold (but not Saskatchewan cold). As I was inside and the cold was outside I wasn't much bothered, until the house began to creak and pop, which completely freaked the feline staff. Anya was waking me up all night with a worried "meow," which I took to mean, "Lazy human, we are about to die, do something." My reassurances that it was just the cold settling into the house's bones didn't improve her morale all that much.

Her sister wasn't too worried, I think she slept through it all.

Awakened on Monday (far too early after a late night in front of the telly) to hear the wind howling outside. Checked the temperature...

3°...

...with a "feel like" of minus 20°. Yay!

Should I call it a wash and go back to bed? Nah, feline staff had vet appointments that morning so I might as well go to work. Looking out the window there didn't seem to be too much ice on the car. But looks can be deceiving.

Both front doors (Honda Element only has those two really) were frozen shut. After a moment of thinking about the gorilla approach (grunt, just pull harder on door handle, Og) it struck me that I didn't wish to buy and install a new door handle. Then I remembered that the Element has a rear hatch and a tail gate. Which opened after only a moment's protest.

Climbing over the back seats and the front seats (while wearing a bulky winter jacket) I managed to reach the driver's seat. Once upon a time I had the opportunity to climb into the pilot's seat in the E-3A AWACS, this reminded of that time. A rather cramped cockpit it seemed to me, compared to the spacious accommodations of the F-4D Phantom II.

Anyhoo, got Big Girl started with only some minor groaning and whining from all of the frozen components, and after scraping copious amounts of ice off the windscreen, we were on our way. Scraping ice doesn't bother me that much, it keeps me warm and is saving me the 30 grand it would cost to build a nice garage. Which is, of course, the only type of garage acceptable to The Missus Herself.

As I drove to work over the Mt. Hope Bridge I noted, casually, that "the ocean is on fire!"

Sea smoke dontcha know, the water is still much warmer than the air, so when the cold air brushes over the surface, fog forms, which some call sea smoke. I like that term, sounds rather nautical doesn't it?

So I snapped that photo above on the way home from the parking lot of a local dining emporium. After taking the shot I saw this...


Canada geese sheltering from the wind. At first I thought they were ducks, then one stretched his neck out (probably to determine what the heck the silly human was doing) and confirmed their identity as geese.

Like I said, the water was warmer than the air, not that I would take shelter therein, but hey, it was out of the wind. While they did look miserable, they were probably handling the weather better than I did!

Bitter cold it was. But on the upside, it's supposed to be 40° tomorrow.

Practically a bloody heat wave!


Stay warm my friends!



42 comments:

  1. Ugh......rain turning to sleet and then the freeze.......just ugh. Don't ask me what the replacement garage cost although I AM glad I went with the longer length, more room to store the lawn mower and snow blower. Hmmmm....... goose season over?........ just asking....for a ....friend.

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    1. Nylon. Because of the possessions rule, "Possessions will expand to overfill whatever space you build for possessions," we planned our shed to be bigger than we could ever need. The Gods laughed and now we have Shed #1 and Shed #2.

      We don't even whisper the words, "I'm sure we have enough space now" lest hubris create a Greek tragedy that results in building Shed #3.





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    2. Nylon12 - Last time I had a garage was in Germany. Had lots of stuff in there, just not the car.

      Sigh...

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    3. We're in the possession reduction phase of our life in my house. Amazing how much we can amass that we haven't used in years and years. Not sure why I keep it, other than "maybe someday..."

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    4. I find that as soon as I divest myself of something, I need it.

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    5. My current wife keeps reminding me that we could use another bedroom in this condo. No one visits (or rarely anyway), so I think not. We moved out of a 3000'SF, 46 years of residency, house. We had stuff. Kids don't want much of it, particularly the books which prove my conspiracy theories. Stuff has unprotected sex while you sleep and the gestation period is immediate. Beware of a garage that is in anyway larger than your car.

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    6. Oddly enough, the garage in Germany was only marginally bigger than the car, which is why the car usually stayed in the driveway. So the garage just began accumulating "stuff," seemingly all on its own!

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  2. John: you hit the nail on the head. It takes teeth grinding together and iron will to try to winnow DOWN stuff to make room. Local DAV chapter got most of the parents clothes and last summer saw the start of reorg/shrinking out in the garage. Best of luck to you folks!

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    1. I try not to accumulate too much stuff. Well, except for books, I have (in The Missus Herself's view) far too many of those. Could I part with them? At gunpoint maybe, and a few warning shots might need to be fired.

      Clutter reduction is a valuable skill but yes, much gnashing of teeth and an iron will are required. (Did I mention rending of garments and wailing?)

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    2. The Military is great at making you control your horde. Not so much when you get out and settle down, OldAFSmaug.

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    3. Ooh, I like that. But now I need to keep a weather eye out for dwarves and hobbits hanging about.

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    4. Easiest way is to take 20 minutes or more in the bathroom. You know, no short shi...ts?

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    5. Didn't work for for Tywin Lannister, Just sayin'...

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    6. Man... toss out what shoulda been a monitor destroying comment and I get GOTed.

      Well play, sir, well played.

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    7. Hahaha!

      (You always get my references.)

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  3. Blogger struck again, erased my brilliant and witty comment, it did. So you get the short version: Y'all stay warm, ya hear.

    Thanks for the post.
    Paul L. Quandt

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    1. Yes, me too. I guess I came up on bloggers " You need to prove you are you. " list. I had to prove I'm me to get to my email account. If I had remembered and followed my rule about doing a ' copy save ' on my comments, I would not have lost my original comment. Mea culpa.

      Paul

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    2. Oh yes, that's a "feature" of Blogger. You can type the comment in, then (if you're not logged in) it makes you log in, then once you're logged in, your comment is gone. Stupid system, easily fixed in software but they probably don't really care. (If they did Blogger would offer a comment editing feature like WordPress does). What I do is never log off. That way I don't run into that problem, usually. Every now and then Google (which owns Blogger) will have a brain fart and "forget" that I'm logged in already and make me log in again.

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    3. Blogger seems to run so much better on Firefox and on iOS. Somebody somewhere in the apple orchard said that it was a fault of the latest OSX iteration.

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    4. I've had some minor issues (on a PC) using Firefox. Not sure what Android (my phone) uses.

      But if you're not logged in, Blogger will toss the comment away.

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  4. Lots of people complaining here is south Florida about the miserable cold. Why it's only 58 degrees! I guess we'll just have to tough it out. As for you OAFS, is it true that you saw a brass monkey searching under all the foliage in that beautiful garden?

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    1. Yup. Little bastard looked pretty cold too!

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    2. Here in Baraboo, we are expecting 8-9" of snow this afternoon/ night. Today's high of 1 9 is gonna be the high for the week. Friday's high "will struggle to reach 1. This is fairly normal for this time of year. But at least I don't live in Duluth, like Andy N. does! They have highs in the twenties below!

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    3. What we called one of the Northern Tier states back in my Air Force days.

      Isn't Duluth above the Arctic Circle? (I'm kidding but it might as well be...)

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  5. I feel "for" you, but I'm sure glad I don't feel "like" you, meaning cold as heck. I don't do well in cold weather and lil Rhodey is where I firxt experienced true cold wx. My airline buddy posted a video of himself where you could see his breath. This was in Boston. The funny part is that this was inside the terminal. I guess Boston Logan's HVACC couldn't keep up.

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    1. Truth be told, Little Rhody (at least where I'm at) tends to be warmer than farther north. The ocean moderates the temperature very nicely.

      This was the first place you experienced true cold weather? I trust you've seen colder since then?

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    2. Affirm. I may have mentioned it in a post in the past, but I left 75 degree wx in San Diego in November or December, wearing shorts and flip flops the morning before my flight. Flew to Newport for TAO school and experienced 15 degree wx the next morning. The wind coming off the water was bone-chilling. All I had was my CNT Khakis and leather flight jacket. The SWOs in the class all had pea-coats, scarves, and gloves. Some years later I traveled from Tampa to Philly in January with the family for a Navy buddy's wedding. Zero degrees, but no wind. However, we were appropriately clothed this time so the experience was far better. No scraping of ice off the rental as it was warmed up for us and it was dry there anyway.

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    3. My AF dad was on a Range Tracking and Instrumentation Ship, sailing out of Miami in December. So he was all decked out in the latest hot weather AF bermudas and short sleeves. So the ship actually gets out east of Bermuda, far away from the jet stream, in December and the Navy CO takes pity on my father and sends him down to the uniform storage and et voila, one AF Lieutenant wearing Navy uniforms with AF insignia. Apparently it was a cold one. Uniforms were all 'rentals' so no pea coat made it home, darned it.

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    4. Sigh, reminds me of the German "tank suit" (Bundeswehr overalls) I was issued in Germany. German flag on 'em and everything, which I wore with my U.S. issue camo cap, which confused all the American lieutenants. I so wanted to "lose" that.

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    5. I should have said coveralls. I think...

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  6. "Sea Smoke", huh? Never heard it called that, but I've seen it plenty of times when I worked on a ship in the harbor.

    I always liked the way it clung to the water, and the way thick patches of fog would cover a small section of the access road, and cars coming out of it would just "pop out", dragging wisps of fog with them.

    Got a light dusting of snow last night, along with 35kt winds. Bright and sunny now, 30*, with steady 25kt winds.

    We have a large flock of migratory Canadian Geese here, along with a much smaller group that stays here all year. They come into our neighborhood, devouring everything like a swarm of locusts, poop all over the place, and challenge you if you have to walk past a group of them.

    Very pretty to see flying overhead, and very annoying to live with!

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    1. The geese are ubiquitous here, where I work has tons of them. Along with tons of green goose poop.

      30° with 25kt winds? Betcha it feels colder that 30°!

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    2. Yep, it's pretty "brisk" out there today, even though the sun is shining brightly.

      The dog won't even go out until she absolutely has to.....

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    3. We have turkey vultures. The trees around the apartment have 30-40 of the things, which means that one must be careful not to be vulture-pooped on.

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    4. Turkey vulture poop? No, no way, careful isn't quite the word for it!

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  7. So if sea smoke is a thing, is pond smoke? We have 3 ponds, all filled by springs, one of which never, ever freezes, so when Lake Michigan is starting to freeze over, the ducks and geese begin to migrate east to our pond. Had a dozen mallards on it yesterday morning.

    I know it is cold outside when I go out to feed my chickadees, and the one lonely bunny who hangs around, some cracked corn, and my nose hairs freeze when I try to breath in. It was -13 here the other morning, and warmed up to a high of 13. Yesterday, when I had to throw down some firewood, I waited til 3pm as it was all the way up to 20!! I did that one box and beat feet back inside, where it is lovely warm.

    I am fine without a garage all spring, summer, fall, but when it starts to freezing rain, or snow, my car with 217000+ miles on it gets to live in the garage. The motorcycle that doesn't gets moved up to the barn, the one that does run gets moved to the very front of the garage and put up on the lift, and the side-by-side gets snuggled over as far as possible, after the recycle stuff goes to the recycle place. Yes, stuff certain does expand to fill space provided, but it also can be compressed to make more space. I have promised Hubbie (who wont throw out anything that he, Mom or Dad ever dragged home) that when he goes, the day after the funeral, I am calling the dumpster company, the Salvation Army truck, and the 1-800-got-junk boys and I am going to clean house. Throughly, completely, and out to the bare walls. He said better me than him. His niece, who was sitting here during the conversation, laughed, and said, well what if there was something family wanted. Told her anything he puts in a Will will be honored, anything else, folks have had over 10 years to date to come and get stuff. If there is something they want, they need to speak up or else they are SOL. My house, my rules.

    Why, yes, yes I can be a hard ass at times, why do you ask?

    Beans: Turkey vulture poop...yikes!!!

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    1. I'm guessing that the same phenomenon which causes sea smoke causes pond smoke as well. Very cold air, warmer water is what it takes.

      Felt like minus 20° yesterday morning, freezing nose hairs are definitely a thing!

      Stay warm Suz!

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