Monday, February 05, 2007, 05:21
In The Deep Freeze (So What Else Is New?)
It was 25 degrees below zero Fahrenheit Sunday morning at our place.
When I went outside with Pixie first thing in the morning, it sounded like small bombs were going off in the woods. It was the trees snapping and cracking from the cold.
After only a few minutes, Pixie was shivering. Usually when I feed the horses in the morning, Pixie stays outside, too. But Sunday morning, I put her back in the house. I didn't think there was any reason for *all* of us to be shivering. Besides, Pixie only weighs 30 pounds, so she doesn't have much body mass to keep her warm.
The horses were very glad to see Randy and I. They dove into their grain and didn't come up for air until every last morsel had been licked up. Then they attacked their hay with undisguised enthusiasm.
Good.
When horses are eating, it means they feel all right.
The barn cats never came out of their cubbyhole in the hay, so I climbed up on the hay and put more food in their dish just inside the cubbyhole. I climbed back down and filled an insulated cup with warm water for them and tied it to a hay bale next to their cubbyhole. Which is an adventure all by itself since I have to take my chopper mittens off to do it.
Charlie insisted on eating his breakfast outside Sunday morning. That's part of his routine. He always eats breakfast outside. When it's very cold, he is willing to eat his supper inside. But not breakfast. I could tell that his food was freezing to the side of the dish before he could eat it, though. He worked at it a while to get the frozen bits off the dish. When he was finished, he came and sat by my feet and shivered.
"Do you want to go basement, Charlie?" I asked.
The words were hardly out of my mouth before Charlie had headed down around the side of the house, looking over his shoulder to see if I was coming behind him and wondering what was taking me so long. After all, *he* was headed toward the basement door on the run, and I ought to be, too.
By the time we got home from church, the sun was shining brightly, but unfortunately, the wind had picked up significantly, too, so that windchills were between 30 and 40 below.
I gave the horses more hay and more warm water, gave the barn cats more kitty food and more warm water, and took Charlie for a walk around the hayfield. When I was finished, I was very willing to go back inside, and so was Charlie.
Sunday was one of those days, as my dad used to say, that makes you glad to be inside. (Especially when I realized the "high" for Sunday afternoon was 11 degrees below zero.)
Brrrrrrrrrr. . .
One thing about it, though. I'm getting back into the routine of dressing for extreme cold weather: turtleneck, sweat pants on under my jeans, hooded sweatshirt, windbreaker, fleece zip-up, fleece tunic, wool scarf, mittens inside of chopper mittens, windbreaker pants over my sweat pants and jeans. Four or five pairs of wool socks.
I don't walk when I go outside. I waddle.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, February 03, 2007, 22:37
Wrong Yet Again. . .
I distinctly remember the weather forecasters saying that the high temperature on Saturday was going to be 0 degrees Fahrenheit.
The high temperature this afternoon was 9 degrees *below* 0.
The forecasters were right about one thing, though: the wind. A strong wind has been blowing out of the west/northwest all day. The windchill is down between 30 and 40 below this afternoon. The sun is shining, but it doesn't help much when the wind is that cold.
I made the mistake, too, of looking up the long-range forecast on the Internet. For the rest of the week, until next weekend, lows are predicted of between 10 below and 20 below with highs in the day of the single digits, if that.
It has been cold like this for the past three weeks. And from all indications, it will remain cold for at least another week.
I'm not asking for much. Not really. But lows around 0 and highs of 15 or 20 would be nice.
Last night I saw something, too, that I have never seen before. The sky was clear. The moon was shining. The stars were shining. And it was snowing. This morning both of the trucks were covered with a fine layer of snow. And yet there wasn't a cloud in the sky last night. We surmised that the cold air was squeezing every last bit of moisture out of the atmosphere so that it ended up snowing without clouds.
Sometimes when it is cold, I have seen it snowing *inside* the barn, too, early in the morning. When the sun comes around and begins heating the barn roof, all of the frost that has accumulated on the ceiling overnight lets go, and then it is snowing inside the barn.
Windchill warnings will remain around here until at least Monday, the forecasters say. We let Charlie out this morning when we fed the horses. We took the dogs for a walk around the hayfield, and then we put Charlie back inside his kennel where it is warm. Charlie usually likes to be outside all day, but not when it's this cold. We didn't let the kitties go out at all. They wouldn't stay out, anyway. They'd be out for a few minutes and would want to come right back in.
There's not much we can do for the horses except make sure they have warm water to drink and give them extra grain and hay to help keep them warm.
I will be glad when the weekend is past and the wind has died down.
LeAnn R. Ralph