A to Z Challenge - N is for NOT NICE

Not snow, but ice pellets!

The weather in these parts is NOT NICE! Spring has been pretty much a Non-starter this year, reluctant would be a generous description. My current 'forecast' is that this season of promise will amount to the two or three days between the furnace going off and the air conditioner coming on. You heard it here first!










This past weekend, ice pellets, freezing rain, and erratic winds whipped up a mess of weather, obliterating any plans that required going outside. The constant chattering of the ice pellets on my windows sounded like so much static on a radio, so much so that I had to seek refuge away from my usually comfy kitchen. The sound was so very irritating to me.


And when I did go outside, (the pup needs walkies), the wind-driven ice pellets delivered a biting exfoliation to exposed skin. It felt like I was being sandblasted!

The view from my sun (???) room. Ice art on glass...

But...

...I also have to confess to being a weather geek. I love a good storm. And so in the midst of all the miserable cold and precipitation, I was tracking the storm, watching the temperature gradient and the wind data. It's in my genes.

My late father, Bev Cudbird, was a weatherman, a meteorologist with Environment Canada until retirement and then the staff meteorologist for radio station CFRB from the late seventies to the early 1980's. I like to think he pioneered that media role. Of course, radio has some definite advantages over TV; presenters don't have to worry about what they're wearing, and as in my Dad's case, one doesn't even have to be in the studio. Most of Dad's broadcasts came from the upstairs den in my parents' condo in Etobicoke. If you listened carefully to some of those broadcasts you could hear the chattering of the two teletype machines that spewed out the latest observations and forecasts on reams of newsprint paper.



For Dad, there was no room for moaning and groaning about the weather, though there was plenty of room to chastise forecasters for spending so much time peering at the radar and studying forecast models, that they forgot to look out the window. I can see him now, tearing off a sheet from the teletype, looking at the latest official forecast, ripping it in two and yelling, "Look out the goddam window!"



He would take a weekend like we just had with its icy mess and tell us how good this is for soil moisture and lake levels, how good this is for food crops - bright green peas, long orange carrots and later in the season, bright red tomatoes, warm from the garden. So that's how I'm going to look at these days - a luscious tomato in the making!

I feel better already!
Thanks Dad!

Bev Cudbird, The Weatherman
1914 - 1984

©2018 April Hoeller