Good morning. How y’all doing? Sorry if this is turning into the local weather report every day, but all I’ve really had time to pay attention to the past few days is moving snow, white-knuckle driving, and sleep (hell, I didn’t even mention that SU kicked Michigan State’s ass down in The Garden the other night). Around here, everybody looks pretty tired (more from the stress of trying to get back and forth to work than anything else, I think. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. We don’t get hurricanes or earthquakes or tornadoes, and sooner or later the snow melts, spring comes, and it gets too goddamn hot, and the snow is really quite beautiful if you don’t have to go to work). Anyhow, I know I’m pretty tired, so I’m taking today (and tomorrow) off. What with there supposed to be a break in the snow (only a couple of inches predicted for today), I decided I needed to take some time to catch my breath a little bit.

Driving in to work was a royal pain in the ass yesterday (for a change). It started out as it has all week, with me out on the tractor plowing the driveway. Unfortunately, the tractor started to sound kinda crappy, and eventually it was all I could do to get it to limp back into the garage. On the bright side, I’d gotten enough cleared to get out of the driveway, and we decided that we’d both go in to work together – with me driving my in-law’s Jeep Cherokee (very nice vehicle, that thing; 4WD, rear wiper, 9 years old with 21,500 miles on it). It would have been truly unbearable w/o it.

So, I got granny to work, made it to the dentist with 2 minutes to spare, and then to work. I went out and got some Cetane boost for the tractor (I’m hoping it was just crappy diesel) at lunch time, and then things were actually not too crappy for the ride home (I actually saw some bare pavement on the road, and the crescent moon and stars in the sky), and, thanks to the Jeep, I was able to get in to the driveway and blast through the very impressive snow drifts that seem to build up out here when you don’t plow for a few hours.

I put the booster in the tank and ran the tractor for 15 minutes or so, but, as we’re both off today, I didn’t bother taking it out and doing any work with it. Figured there was no point in getting myself aggravated. I also checked the air filter, just to make sure it hadn’t gotten full of snow and turned into a giant ice ball or something (which it didn’t). Everything seemed to run fine (a bit of white smoke for a while; maybe water in the diesel? See if I ever buy it from that place again), so we’ll see. I’ll run it for a while again today before I get out on it. It really needs to work, ‘cuz we were supposed to get another 8-16 inches overnight (too dark to see what the damage was right now), and another storm is coming (plus it’s gonna get really cold next week; something to look forward to).

So, officially, since Saturday, Syracuse had gotten over 43″ as of midnight last night. That’s not the most snow we’ve ever gotten around here, but it’s plenty. We typically average about 17″ to this point in the season, and we’ve got over 2½ times that.

I’m really hoping this is one of those years where it starts out like this and then peters out.

Oh well, in keeping with the weather theme, I saw this on the Intertubes. It’s an example of what a ‘high-tech’ weather report was like 36 years ago. Note the magnetic numbers and what looks like a paper version of the satellite photo (you can see the wrinkly paper), on which they apparently had to outline Europe with a magic marker. And they didn’t have a US Satellite image, ‘cuz the NOAA satellite didn’t pass over the US that day. Oh, we’ve come a long way. Not necessarily to a better place, but it’s been a long journey.

The weather dude in this clip, by the way, is Steve Newman, who you may know from Earthweek (which premiered as a column in the SF Chronicle in 1988 and is widely syndicated today), as well as from the Discovery Channel and GMA. All the good ones make their way through Syracuse. Sports and weather – that’s our thing.