The Vortex Cometh

Dr. Zhivago - The Ice Palace

    The news all over Chicagoland the past few days has been about the polar vortex that is bringing us the coldest day in recorded history. It is 6 pm Tuesday, January 29th, the temperature is 1oF. Overnight the temperature will drop to -21oF. Tomorrow, Wednesday, January 30th, the temperature will not rise above -11oF or -24oC. It is this last record that is the record setter as it will be the lowest high in recorded history.
    Of course, the low temperatures are serious, but it really gets interesting when we include the wind chill factor, in fact, it gets downright scary. The winds will gust from 19 – 24 mph. The wind chills will vary between 30 - 60oF. The news shows all have experts saying the effects of frostbite will manifest themselves on exposed skin in five minutes. You could walk outside to get the mail, if they actually deliver the mail tomorrow, and your ears could freeze and fall off. OK that is an exaggeration, but this is crazy serious stuff. This is not a good time to be homeless in Chicago.
     Most schools have already closed including North Park University where I teach. Many businesses have also decided to allow people to work from home including my wife’s. We will be bundled up, hibernating indoors, and Pasternaking. Pasternaking? The kind of extreme weather that is moving in, reminds me of Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. The scenes that impressed in both the book and the movie are when Yuri and Lara where hibernating during the brutal Russian winter and Yuri wrote poems for her. Of course, there are the brilliant scenes of the ice palace. It will be that kind of day tomorrow.
     I feel impelled to write a poem tomorrow. If I do it should be with a fountain pen by candlelight. But truth be told and assuming the internet connections all work, I will be grading and writing by the light of a computer monitor.
     I actually like a real winter like we are having. I love the big snows and cold blasts. I grew up with four seasons and enjoy them all. It is not a real winter without these Zhivago like snows and frigid blasts of cold. The weather this week, I will admit, is beyond the kind of frigid blast that I need to feel like we had a real winter.  Honestly, the cold extremes and big snows of winter are more fascinating to me that heat waves and torrential rains of summer.
     This is not the first time I have blogged about this love for and fascination with winter.

• An Old Fashioned Winter 2-11-18
• Snow Day! 1-8-18
• For the Love of a Good Winter Blast 1-11-15
• Brutalmente Frio! 1-30-14
• It Began with an Air Bath 1-27-09
• Winter Survival 1-05

     I have been joking for the past few days with my students that the one of the good things about the polar vortex is that it takes my mind off of global warming. It is humorous but a sign of a system being out of control can be the increases in the kinds of extreme weather we have experienced throughout the year e.g. longer hurricane and tornado seasons, more hurricanes and tornados than ever, hotter summers, and weirder winters. To me, this is just another example of such an extreme.      Just as I sat down to write this piece, almost on cue, President Trump tweeted:

     He does have a way with words…
     Stay warm and safe Chicago.