Random thoughts, observations, and comments. I'm not creative, so deal with it. Phillip Wagstrom's Weblog

The sun hit the thermometer so its showing a bit warmer than it actually is. If you can believe it, my feet didn't hurt until after I came back inside.

Well, I guess that winter has to come eventually. We're not even done with the other season here in Minnesota (that being Road Construction) and this morning I had frost on my lawn.

90's last week and frost this morning. Bring it on!

So today it finally looks like we're going to be getting some actual, significant snowfall today. Weather folks are talking anywhere from 4 - 6 inches in the Twin Cities. This will be the first major snowfall (major being defined as more than 1 inch in a 24hour period) this winter. I've got about 3 or 4 inches total on the ground up at my home (in the far northern suburbs of the Twin Cites). Most of that has fallen in the past two or three days. The official record keepers at the MSP Airport haven't seen that much, which is pretty obvious when looking around down at the Sun Office in Bloomington.

I think that we've had only 4 inches total of snow so far this year, compared to the 2 feet that we're suppsed to have had by now. Lack of snow is a bad thing for my landscaping. Snow, believe it or not, acts as a nice insulator. Without the snowcover, the frost goes deep into the ground when you have the bone-chilling sub-zero highs like we had last week. I don't want to see how many of my landscaping bushes, or the tulips my wife planted in the fall decide not to sprout this spring.

I feel bad for Raleigh, NC. Looks like the whole city was shut down yesterday by a mere inch of snow. Amazing... well, maybe not so when you consider that they don't have the sanding or salt trucks that we do up here (nor do they really need them.)

I'm not going to be able to enjoy the snow for that long though. I'm heading out to Denver on Sunday to write the Solaris 10 Certification Exams. Denver was 70 yesterday! (Which accoring to the Weather Channel was a record.)

So here it is, January 10th, and we still don't have a single day with 1" of snow so far this year. Sure, there's snow on the ground right now in places, as well as a few piles from where the shovels or plows have pushed the little that we have. However, we still have the brown grass showing and no place to do any cross country skiing.

Snow has gone north of us. Snow has gone south of us. Snow has gone east of us... I want my share now!

Okay, so we finally got some snow today. It wasn't much. I doubt that it amounted to more than half an inch. At least it took care of some of the brown.

Got a little snow yesterday as well after a little bit of freezing rain/sleet that made a mess of the roads. Something like 200+ accidents on the roads yesterday. Luckily, I decided to work from home so it wasn't a problem for me.

Of course I paid for it this morning. It took me about 1 hour and 45 minutes to get into the office. I'm still amazed at how many people forget how to drive in a bit of snow.

Now it looks like the freezer door is being left open here. Highs on Friday may reach the whopping temperature of 1 degree!

Winter is finally starting to make its presence known.

So here it is, December 17th. We've already had a couple of times where the temp has dropped below 10 degrees Farenheit, so we've got the cold. Where's the snow?

Grass is brown and Christmas is coming and Jack Frost is surely nipping at the nose. But there isn't a drifting bank to get upsot in. This is getting depressing.

Chicago has had snow. Wisconsin has had snow. Michigan has snow. I think that Iowa has snow too... but nothing here in Minnesota that resembles snow.

Are we on Santa's naughty list or something?