The Great Blizzard of Twenty-Fifteen, Among Other Things

Long-time bloggy blogger and likely difficult person in general Andrew Sullivan retired from the act of blogging today.

I never regularly read Sullivan's blog after his interest in the intersection of race and IQ turned my stomach, but I did find myself sympathetic to a few things he said in his post today about the daily grind of blogging. This is all just writing, but blogging for many--I include myself in that 'many'--seems to include an inherent demand for timeliness and relevance, and that can lead to a constant feeling of being on deadline. Even if that deadline is entirely self-imposed, it does cause stress.

After I'd been blogging for the heck of it for 5 years--for fun--it took off for me in 2005 and became a job. At the time I was probably 60 lbs. overweight. By the time I backed away from blogging as I understood it for a bit (I never "retired," really) in 2009, I was a full 100 lbs overweight. My blood pressure was insanely high and my lifelong problem with insomnia was off the charts bad. I had acid reflux and my asthma, long dormant, had begun to flare again.

Not having a single-purpose blog of my own to obsess over, just a series of freelance gigs, I was able to focus on losing that weight and feeling better again. I understand Andrew Sullivan's feeling that he'll end up healthier if he steps away from this kind of every day thing. Chances are he's right.

After reading about Sullivan's quasi-retirement I tweeted a joke about my return to blogging, because this kind of endeavor is really missing the input of progressive, middle-aged white men with underlying anger issues.

Truth is, though, I really do feel more ready than I truly have in some time to do this every day. I think I'm going to try and have just one rule: not make any rules for what I put here. I mean, there are rules, sure, but I'm going to ease this space into something closer in many ways to what I was doing when I first began blogging in 2000.

Like, this post started out to be about this blizzard. We had a blizzard where I live, in Central Massachusetts, and it was a sonofabitch. Three feet of snow, full blizzard conditions for 7 hours straight. The Weather Channel dubbed it Juno, which is fine, but I like the old-fashioned Blizzard of 2015. Mostly because such a considerable storm deserves a timeless moniker like that.

The blizzard began in earnest late Monday and consumed all of Tuesday, non-stop sideways snow drifting to the tops of single-story homes. It was epic, and I enjoyed it.

I lived in the south till I was 45, and growing up in the south, snow is introduced as a treat. It's always unexpected, and because no southern city has the infrastructure to deal with it, it enforces a respite when it comes. Whether anyone wants it or not, people get a holiday. It doesn't take much, either--in 2011, five inches of snow shut down Atlanta for a solid week.

You'd think that growing up and eventually having to drive to work in snowstorms would have robbed me of my enjoyment--it did not. And I had one job in one of the few regions of the south that sees real snow on occasion that was atop a treacherous hill. Stressful as driving that hill was in the snow, I still was glad every time it began to fall.

Today I took a 2-mile walk among plowed-up mountains of snow and down alleys of snow neatly carved by hard-working snow blowers. I normally listen to music when I walk, but this was too dangerous; I needed to be able to hear oncoming vehicles, in case one lost traction and I had to dive in a drift.

Nothing much happened; I didn't even slip and fall. But I enjoyed it. The silence, the stillness. Everything cold, and calm.

This was the second historic storm to hit this city since we've lived here. I suspect there are more in store. I'm fine with that.

****

That was the blog post proper. If I do have one goal as I write more, it is to pare these down and focus them. So, let's see where this rabbit hole goes.

A derecho threatens the midwest like Godzilla looming above Tokyo

Derechos and the wrath of God both look like this (Wikimedia)

Weather forecasters say a potentially dangerous derecho is cooking in the skies above the Midwest and several major metropolitan areas are "in the threat zone" on both Wednesday and Thursday.  A little more from the forecast o' doom:

The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center said 12 million people were at high risk of severe weather, including Chicago, Fort Wayne, Ind., and the Illinois cities of Aurora, Rockford and Joliet. An additional 60 million were under moderate or slight risk, from Milwaukee to Washington.

Derechos are severe storm complexes known to meteorologists for many years, but it's only been in the last year or so that the public has become aware of them. With good reason--a huge derecho swept from Indiana to Virginia on June 29/30, 2012, killing 22 without ever even dropping a tornado. Derechos don't need to. According to Wikipedia (honestly, often a good basic source for some information), derechos are "widespread, long-lived, straight-line windstorm(s) that are associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms." On radar, derechos form a distinctive bow and tend to plow like a slow-moving arrow of destruction across the land, looking biblical along the way (see above).

It's probably just me but I find derechos rather eerie. Tornadoes are apocalyptic, truly terrifying, but there's something about a great black cloud front rushing in with sustained winds, hail and driving rain that seems almost malevolent.

If there is a silver lining, Weather.com forecasters don't seem 100% certain the worst form of the storm will manifest, writing, "It's possible, though by no means certain, that thunderstorms Wednesday night could congeal into a long-lived squall line called a 'derecho' with a more widespread damaging wind threat in this region."

Anyone who's followed me on Twitter shouldn't be surprised I'm a weather weirdo.

Perhaps inevitably, I find it's getting worse as I age.

Anyway, maybe wear body armor with your gumboots if you have to get out in this one.

[NBC]