Weather Reporting: January 18

I haven’t written much about our current local weather during this month because we’ve had boring regular old winter weather. But I’m making up for that by posting this little shot of our current conditions (Well, they would be current conditions if it were still 10:24AM EST. Sorry. I got sidetracked.), and in Fahrenheit, too, for all those who refuse to embrace the inevitable. 

 

Yes, today’s a  day I’m glad I don’t live in Chicagoland.

• Kim is in Chicagoland, and she calls the temps there “bone chilling.”  I’m pretty sure I’ve already told this story here, but I’ll tell it again anyway. When I lived near Chicago as a child, the temp dipped to -10F once and my mom kept us home from school. Minnesotans and Yukoners think that’s funny, but their cold really is colder than our cold—damper, windier—and “bone chilling” is exactly right.
• How could I not link to this? John Piper says the current cold in Minnesota is A Kind of Cold You Don’t Play With. “We receive this,” he says, “from the Lord’s hand.” 

  He sends out his command to the earth;
  his word runs swiftly.
  He gives snow like wool;
  he scatters hoarfrost like ashes.
  He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs;
  who can stand before his cold?
  He sends out his word, and melts them;
  he makes his wind blow and the waters flow.
  (Psalm 147:15-18)

• Tricia is in northern California, or what she calls “the other California,” where it’s sunny and wonderful.
• I wrote a post on The Year With No Summer, which, of course, would never happen in northern California, where it’s never winter and always Christmas.
• Update: Brrr! on Sunday in Pennsylvania where Pam lives.
• Update: Breaking news: There’s snow in Alabama.
• Update: And now it’s colder still in Chicagoland. Good weather to stay home and putter around in your PJs.
  

You can be a weather geek, too. You’ll find the details for participating here. If you send me a link to your weather related post before tomorrow (Saturday) evening, I’ll add your link to this post. If you send it after that, expect to see your post linked in this coming Tuesday’s weather report.

The Year With No Summer

When I was a child I read a novel that mentioned a year in the 1800s when there was no summer. I read a book a day at that time and they all blend together, so don’t expect me to remember a title. What I’ve never forgotten, however, is that there really was a year without summer.

I imagined a year with snow cover all year round, when people ice skated on frozen lakes in July. It wasn’t quite like that, but 1816 was an unusual weather year. There was a snowstorm that dumped 4 inches of snow in New England in the middle of June, and there was frost overnight for several days in a row in both July and August. In between those extraordinary occurrences, there was normal summer weather, but the frosts caused crop failure in the northeastern US and eastern Canada.

In Europe, there was nearly constant cold and wet, with crop failures there, too. In Ireland, it rained for 142 days in the summer, causing a famine. There was no grape harvest in France and no grain harvest in Germany. 

Historians blame the eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia the year before,  the biggest eruption in recorded history. All those ash particles in the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere were bound to cause significant changes in the weather.

Not every result bad. There were brilliantly colourful sunrises and sunsets, which some say inspired the intense glowing depictions of the sun on the horizon in the paintings of the British impressionist painter J. M. W. Turner. You see an example in Turner’s painting of Flint Castle above, and another in one of his nautical paintings, The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up.

According to oral tradition, we had a year with no summer here in the Yukon, too, and people starved. In the 1970s, Yukon elder Rachel Dawson reported that it occurred over one hundred years before her time. Here’s how she decribes it.

Two winters joined together. No snow, but there was ice all over, and the winters were joined together. 

There are variations to the story, and it’s impossible to pin down exactly when it was. Perhaps it was 1816, when the Tambora volcano wreaked widespread havoc, or maybe it was either 1845, 1849, or 1850, when tree ring measurement shows very little growth.

But it all goes to show that in the weather realm, strange things can happen anywhere any time.

What I’m waiting for is the year with no winter. Of course, we’d chalk that up to global warming/climate change.

What particular use is there of the moral law to unregenerate men?

The moral law is of use to unregenerate men, to awaken their consciences to flee from wrath to come,[1] and to drive them to Christ;[2] or, upon their continuance in the estate and way of sin, to leave them inexcusable,[3] and under the curse thereof.[4]

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