“New York Times said it was the coldest Winter in seventeen years. I didn’t feel so cold then.”—Bob Dylan
So after several days of dire warnings of impending doom from Mr. Weather--who predicted temperatures as low as a scary 19 degrees--Tuesday dawned and it was downright reasonable, if you ask me. Oh, I know it was a total nightmare where you are—that goes without saying. After all, when isn’t it? Nobody insisted you live in Seattle, Marty, or Oregon, Deb, or New Hampshire, Kathy--you’re all over twelve and you get to decide for yourselves. As for you, Mike, in fershluggen Hector, Minnesota, where the temperature is a balmy minus 6 on a good day, well, you might consider the possibility of psychiatric assistance. I’m just sayin’.
I’m sure there are good reasons people live in places like Hector, Minnesota, or even International Falls, virtually always the coldest spot in the country. I just can’t think of any, is all. Minnesota Family Schweiss daughters Autumn and Lark sent back videos of their Christmas visit and it looked like they had taken the wrong plane and ended up in a remote outpost in the Arctic. The skies were cloudy and dark. Snow blew sideways across the empty highways. Even Bingo was cancelled. People who live in places like this are looking for trouble, in my opinion. Northerners are always telling us “Oh, you’re so lucky you live in Florida!” Well, not really. It was all part of a plan, see. You look at the map. You say, “Hmmn—freezing cold there—WARM here. I wonder what I’ll do?”
Anyway, I went out Tuesday morning dressed like Albin the Aleut, replete with earlap hat and comfy gloves, to feed the horses. Didn’t seem so bad. I decided to let my car run awhile and noticed the temperature on the dash was a perky 31, way better than advertised. It was still 31 when I finished up. And still 31 two hours later, at nine a.m., when I went into Fairfield for the paper. Not much of a warmup, but I can work with 31. 31 is practically a heat wave where I grew up in northern Massachusetts. We would celebrate up there any day it got out of the twenties.
When I watch the constant drumming of the national news regarding the record lows across the country and see the amusing videos of vehicles sliding sideways down the boulevards into gigantic piles of convoluted rubble, I never fail to recall the old saw, “It’s an ill wind that bloweth no one good.” The kids, sitting at home, await on pins and needles, anxious for the No School Report. People in the South simply cannot comprehend the wild elation that prevails in northern climes when YOUR town is announced as temporarily forgoing education. Kids, now protected from the ravages of the horrendous weather conditions by merciful school boards, spill from their residences in an orgy of delight. There are hills to slide down, snowballs to be made. Snowballs, by the way, are not always the simple concoctions portrayed in dopey kid movies. You can’t just make snowballs out of any snow. The snow must contain the proper degree of moisture or it will not clump together, a fact unknown to snow virgins. Also valuable information: once the snowballs are compacted and smoothed down, a slight coating of water—just a touch, mind you—can be applied to create an icy surface, enabling you to make a significant dent in the noggins of people you don’t particularly like. WARNING!—always make sure you keep TWO piles of snowballs, one for hated enemies and a softserve for your sisters. This prevents extreme parental aggravation when your sister runs into the house screaming, “MA! MA! BILLY HIT ME WITH AN ICEBALL!” This is the voice of experience speaking.
Kids, of course, have some secret power unknown to adults which allows them to happily play outside in conditions that would trouble the toughest dogs in the Iditarod Sled Race. They are impervious to cold, not unlike tiny versions of Gumby. When they finally come inside, you can stick pins into their fingers and they will not even feel them because their digits are so numb. It must be some kind of mind over matter phenomenon, sorta like when a kid is too sick to get out of bed for ANY reason...and then he hears the siren song of the Ice-Cream Man. There are no answers, only mysteries.
We are not entirely unsympathetic, of course, with the miserable plights of our many friends confined to northern enclaves. But gee, fellas, it could be worse. Much worse. Like in:
The Weather Outside Is Frightful….
If you’re feeling sorry for yourself, consider International Falls, Minnesota. In December, the airport there had a record of 8 days with a temperature of less than –30 F, which breaks the old record of 7 days. Oh, and we know what you smart alecs are going to suggest—get out of the airport. Worth a try, perhaps, but probably only marginal improvement.
Or you could, for some unexplainable reason, be stuck in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States, a mere 1300 miles south of the North Pole. The single beneficial aspect to living in Barrow is that Santa Claus gets there first. Otherwise, nada. The place is built on permafrost, for Christ’s sake, that is up to 1300 feet deep. The sun sets at the end of November and doesn’t show up again until the end of January. Of course, the natives can always look forward to July, when the average mean temperature soars to 40.4 degrees.
In Verkhoyansk, Russia, home to 1,434 poor fools—or “hardy residents” according to the chamber of commerce—the average January temperature is minus 50.4 degrees. Mean temps stay below freezing from October through April. In 1892, residents recorded the all-time low of minus 90. We’re not making this stuff up. The town publicity brochure says “Modern-day residents pile on huge fur hats and coats and tend to stay indoors when it gets really cold.” No shit.
It’s much better in Hell, Norway, which often has sub-arctic temperatures. On average, though, Hell freezes over only one third of the year, from December through March.
We were shocked to discover that Fraser, Colorado, at 8574 feet in the Rocky Mountains, is locked in an unending dispute with International Falls over the trademarked title “Icebox of the Nation.” Like anybody would think this was a GOOD thing. Anyway, while International Falls has a colder winter, the average year-round temperature in Fraser is lower. Last summer, Siobhan and Bill passed through Fraser on their summer vacation and stopped in at the Sunshine Herb Market, home of the fabulous Zyto Machine. We don’t want to get Fraserites all up in a lather but it was actually a pretty nice day.
Most experts agree that the coldest city that anybody actually lives in is Yakutsk, Russia, where average lows drop below freezing in September and don’t climb back out until May. The record low there for January is a mind-boggling minus 81.4 degrees. Nonetheless, there are more than 200,000 suckers….er, residents….who live in Yakutsk, where there is a significant mining industry. The city features numerous theaters, museums and even a zoo. Full of polar bears, no doubt. Everybody else would die or run away. When truckers in this region make resupply runs to nearby villages, they don’t turn off their engines for the duration of the two-week trip. Would you?
So, see—you could be worse off. We here at The Flying Pie are always here to provide the pollyanna view to our less fortunate, chattering, snowbound brethren. Remember, each day that passes provides more light, each sunrise is one day closer to Spring, the dogwoods are waiting, the azaleas are holding their breath. Unless you live in Yakutsk, of course. In which case, you’re totally screwed.
Welcome To Beautiful Yakutsk
Winter Fashions In Yakutsk. Summer Fashions, Too.
But Here It’s Just Delightful
It is, at least, if you like it hot all the time, like Siobhan and Allen Morgan. Allen would wear long sleeves at 95 degrees and be just fine, but he would never come out in surly weather. Allen thought 70 degrees was unreasonably harsh. We took him to a softball game once in February and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes with a bearskin hat and a thick muffler. “My nose is cold,” griped Allen.
People like Allen Morgan should take up residence in one of the hotboxes of the world. In most cases, you can live there cheap. The hottest air temperature ever recorded anywhere in the world was in Death Valley, which reached 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913 at Furnace Creek. We were there once. The temperature at the time was a piffling 123 and a warm wind was blowing. When we opened the car doors and got out, it was like entering a blast furnace. We have been in 105 degree temperatures in Las Vegas and this was nothing like that. We stayed in a lush oasis called the Furnace Creek Inn and went into the pool the night we arrived. The winds were blowing about 50 miles per hour, the hot breath of the desert come to remind you that man is a pipsqueak when confronted with the eerie forces of nature. We stood there in the tepid pool, imported palm trees swaying in the wind, and we might as well have been on Mars, it was that strange.
The greatest number of consecutive days with a maximum temperature of 100 degrees or above was 154 in the summer of 2001. The summer of 1996 had 40 days over 120 and 105 days over 110. Still, you couldn’t bring Allen there in January when the average high temperature is a chilly 67. “It’s warmer than this in Martin County,” Allen would snappishly pout.
If you’d like to get out of the country, but not too far, you could always take a quick hop to Jamaica, one of the ten hottest countries in the world. You probably don’t know this, but Christopher Columbus discovered Jamaica in 1494, as commemorated in the popular ditty “Columbus hit the ‘Rasta shore in fourteen-hundred-ninety-four.” He didn’t hang around long. All those puffy explorer clothes just bog you down in the heat.
Harolyn and Bill went to Jamaica once. Bill brought his little two-shot derringer pistol but had to turn it in to customs at the airport. He considered hiding it but thought the nasty socialist government might clap him into one of those famous island prisons where you wither away for centuries. The customs people said they would give it back to him on the flight out. Bill suspected this was a big lie and he was right. If you ever go to Jamaica, don’t bring your gun. Matter of fact, don’t go to Jamaica at all. The beaches are little skinny shoestrings, it rains all the time and nobody likes you. So what if it’s warm.
You could, of course, go to Malaysia. We have friends there, even if we don’t know who the hell they are. If somebody in Malaysia looks at you funny, tell them Bill sent you. That should take care of everything. You’ll think we’re making this up but there is actually a Legoland in Malaysia. No kidding. Nobody seems to know why, but it’s a fact. They also have a flag like ours with nice red and white stripes and a blue cornerpiece. If you’re looking for hot, well, Malaysia is almost smack-dab on the equator. You can’t get much hotter than that. Oh, and it never ever rains so you don’t have to worry about the baseball games being called off.
In Summer, Qatar is the hottest country in the world. The thermometer sometimes rises to 50 centigrade and the humidity on the coast reaches 90%. We kind of like Qatar because the Qatarians haven’t succumbed to pressure from the United Nations to stick a “u” in there after the “q” like everybody else has to do. Hot as it is, the FIFA has nonetheless decided to hold the 2022 World (Soccer) Cup there, if any of you are planning on living that long.
Remember Timbuktu? It’s hot there, too. Nobody knows this, but Timbuktu is a city in the West African nation of Mali. Timbuktu is a World Heritage Site, so nobody short of an invading army is allowed to screw it up. The name has become synonymous with “hard to reach” so you really have to want to go there. First, you fly into a dubious place called Bamako, the Mali capital, then it’s a 20-hour drive to Timbuktu. Make that an off-road drive, for the most part. You know what that means. Barf bags, front and center. Makes a person pine for Jamaica.
Everybody seems to agree that Al’Aziziya, Libya is absolutely the hottest place in the world. The Libyans claim that the temperature there reached 136.4 degrees on September 13, 1922, but we think they’re just trying to beat Death Valley. We’d like to know what kind of temperature-measuring equipment those guys were using in 1922 Libya. Did they just time eggs frying on the sidewalk, or what? Oh, right—you have a point, no sidewalks. Anyway, the World Meteorological Organization, whoever they are, sent in a crack team of detectives headed up by some goober named Randy Cerveny of Arizona State University, who knows from heat, and Randy said his measurements “simply didn’t match up,” so there.
Al’Aziziya is still plenty hot, though. Temperatures there regularly climb over 120 degrees in the summer and that’s not soggy gingerbread. If the Libyans would just replicate a Bern’s Steak House, open up a good martini bar and start up a women’s softball league, even that fussy Allen Morgan might like it.
Welcome To Downtown Al’Aziziya
Exodus
We can’t let the week pass failing to mention that our daring duo of the caped crusader, Bugs the donkey, and his faithful female companion, Lola, the wonder goat, will soon be moving on to greener pastures at the nearby palacial estate of Cindy Desguin, animal-lover extraordinaire. Bugs and Lola will have their own little paddock there amidst the horses, dogs and chickens and Juggernaut will inherit their forest wilderness. I know, I know, it’s always sad to say goodbye to our little animal reclamation projects but when I broached this subject with Siobhan, The Great Healer, she answered the way she always replies in these matters:
“Our work here is done, Kemo Sabe.”
And so is ours.
That’s all, folks….
