Due to some unfortunate circumstances the Polar Vortex has decided to bless us with its presence. I was talking to some people in the @adsactly Discord server the other day and @morkrock being from South Africa had some really great questions about how we survive when it is this cold out.
I thought this was going to be a really unique post, but I see several people on Steemit have already beat me to the punch talking about the amount of snow they got this past weekend or the -36 "feels like" temperature I saw someone post about.
I am going to go ahead with this post anyway, I have some cool pictures that I want to share after all. You can see in the first picture that our indicated temperature was -15 when @mrsbozz and I pulled in to work today. If kids didn't already have school off because of it being a teacher work day, we probably would have been closed.
As you can see from the screenshot above, the wind chill is going to put temperatures into the -25 Fahrenheit range. A chart I found online indicates that about 30 minutes of exposure at those temps can get your fairly well acquainted with frostbite.
Typically most schools districts in our area have a range of about -10 Fahrenheit to -20 that they will close the schools. It is just too cold for those kids that walk to school and heaven forbid a bus full of kids breaks down at these temps.
I walked in to my office today and realized I had forgotten my phone in the car. I still had my jacket on, but no gloves on. By the time I covered the twenty or thirty yards to get to the car, my hands were already aching from the cold. I quickly put them in my pockets until I got back to the safety of my office.
I have seen memes in the past where people lament in the middle of the Winter why they live somewhere where the "air hurts their face". It's days like this that I also question that decision sometimes.
There was a period a couple of years ago where we had close to a weeks worth of days like this. It was so cold one day that the Superintendent even told those of us that normally have to report to just stay home and we wouldn't be charged a PTO(personal time off day). Lucky for us, the temperature is supposed to rebound back up to the mid thirties by Wednesday.
This weekend @mrsbozz and I had to drive about 45 minutes South of where we live to watch our nephew play basketball. The weather report was only calling for a dusting of snow, but we decided to take my truck that has 4WD just in case.
Though not ideal, the roads weren't too bad on the way down. I had it the truck in 4WD auto mode and I was able to go about 60 MPH on the expressway. We were only in the basketball game for at most an hour, but the snow didn't let up the whole time we were in there and by the time we were heading back North, things were quite different.
According to Wazes, the area in the second shot above had about 5 accidents all within a one mile stretch. We were trying to get back home to watch our niece play basketball and it wasn't looking good because of the roads and the traffic.
After we got past the emergency vehicles traffic spread out more, but the roads were still pretty nasty. As we got closer to Bay City, MI there was a significant amount of lake effect snow coming off of the Saginaw Bay.
This presented us with some near white out conditions. We made it to the basket ball game and were only about five minutes late though. They lost the game, but by the time we left the sun was starting to come out. Sadly with the temperatures being so cold, the sun did little to help melt away the snow on the roads. Even the salt that the road crews put down has a hard time melting the snow when the mercury dips that low.
That's the funny thing about Michigan though, in six months we will probably be looking at temperatures in the 90 degree Fahrenheit range and we will be complaining about that as well. I love it though. I don't know as though I would trade the ability to experience each of the seasons (sometimes all in one week) even if I could.
If you have to deal with weather like this where you live, stay safe out there! If you don't, consider yourselves lucky!
