Were you up early enough to see the beautiful sunrise on Wednesday? It was spectacular. Very relaxing and calming, like all is well weatherwise. That certainly is not the case in many parts of our country and around the world, as well.
Record-setting snow, ice and cold from the Midwest to the East Coast with the “monster” storm that at one time covered 2,100 miles. As of this writing, the snowstorm in Chicago is the third greatest snowstorm in the city’s history.
One of my Facebook friends in Waterford, Wis., said that on Wednesday, there were no passable roads in the county except perhaps small sections of the interstate. She is a native of that state and has never seen that before in her lifetime. Wow! And looking at some of her pictures of the massive snowdrifts, I believe it. The storm now called “The Groundhog’s Day Blizzard of 2011” was so massive that earlier predictions for clear skies for the groundhog event Wednesday morning gave way to clouds and snow. Perhaps the eastern half of the nation will indeed have an early spring as the groundhog did not see his shadow. Locally, he would have seen his shadow here, for sure, and we could desperately use at least six more weeks of winter weather in the Cascades to refresh the snow pack.
The other big news is the category 4 tropical cyclone Yasi that hit near Queensland, Australia. It was just 5 mph under a category 5 storm with winds of 155 mph. It was one of the top 10 strongest cyclones in Australia since records were kept in 1970. Besides the high winds, the already saturated soils from last month will be soaked once again.
