Its the End of the World as we Know It

So someone left a window open and the Arctic air is going to invade for the next several days. I think its the polar vortex but it seems like they’ve kind of put that term on the back burner. Before that, we are going to have rain and high winds and all kinds of fun.

Both the cable company and power company have sent out emails telling us about the nasty weather coming and how they are monitoring it. Some low level person gets to sit in front of the weather channel all day. Or they just send someone outside to see how windy and cold it is. Good to know they are on top of it.

The main purpose though is to warn of potential disruptions to cable and power. Cable I could live without. I mean it would suck but you aren’t going to freeze to death if you can’t get online. Power is a different story. The power company had a bunch of helpful tips about what to do including things to put in an emergency kit. And to make sure to sign up for their online notification service where they will helpfully tell you that power is down and they are working as fast as they can to restore it.

I assume they think this is good PR to get out in front of it. So if the wind does blow something down, they can say “well we did warn you”. Not going to lie though – it does bump up my anxiety just a bit because my mind starts going into overdrive of what we would do if there was a big outage. We’ve lost power many times before but it is typically back in a few hours and I am grateful for those who have to venture out in the cold and wind to keep our lights on. 

The one positive about a power outage in winter is that we could just take all the stuff in the fridge and freezer and stick in outside where it will be just fine. Unlike the couple of times we’ve had to get rid of everything because it was the middle of summer and the power was out way to long and everything thawed out. 

At least we aren’t expected to get much snow. I am something of a weather nerd. Not a full fledged one but it interests me. The National Weather Service front page has a map of the US with all the active watches and warnings. The more color on the map, the more screwed we are.

This is what is looked like a few minutes ago.

So Iowa is basically buried in snow. Almost like you don’t have to list specific counties. If you live in Iowa, there is going to be a blizzard. We just have the lightish brown for a “wind advisory” . That feels like one of those things the Weather Service just made up so they could add more colors to the map and so all the weather apps could issue alerts. 

The official definition of a “wind advisory” is Strong winds are occurring but are not so strong as to warrant a High Wind Warning. See, there’s science behind it! Its going to be windy and you should pay attention but it isn’t bad enough to be warned about so we’re just advising you to look out. Maybe a Defcon3 wind event. Could be worse. 

The blue grey swath is for a “Wind Chill Warning” which means it is going to be windy and cold. I wonder if the Wind Chill trumps the whole wind advisory thing. Would assume if the winds are high enough to cause wind chill issues then they’d meet the definition of an Advisory. Do they issue both? Or it is just assumed that if you have a wind chill problem, then you know its windy and don’t need to be so advised. Come tomorrow, I would bet our brown is replaced with the blue grey. 

So we just try to stay warm and hope everything remains on. Not going to be any fun going to dance lessons next week.