Blow, blow thou winter wind

And "freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky". As You Like it, Act III, sc ii.. Yes, another weather post. It has been creakingly cold.

I’m not part of the commuting traffic, or finding a seat on the train, or walking with crowds of people in the city, or with other people heading on foot for their own homes. When you live in the country, and people do not populate your life and your surroundings, the weather assumes a larger presence.

First we had a serious thaw: icicles dripped and grew; I took the big bag full of Christmas tree branches off the porch, and spread the boughs on the garden to be covered by the next snow. They'll do some good in March protecting tender shoots when the ground begins to thaw during the day and freeze again at night. There’s still snow on the ground, but you can see bare ground in abundance.

But the weather guys warned about an Arctic front moving in. On Wednesday the trees were filled with frost (and the camera was at home). On Thursday the front moved in for real.

Ye gods, what wind. When I walked out of work, the wind blew my big fur coat hood, that I’d tied securely, off my head. I drove home in near-whiteout conditions. It was a long, slow trip, and almost no one was on the road, thank heaven. The 8pm weather reported winds of 40 mph and wind chills of minus 30. I believe it. When I got out of the car at home I stepped on ice and the wind almost blew me over. In walking 8 feet from car to house I got cold. It was seriously windy all night. Friday morning the car told me that the temperature was -10. Saturday at 7 am it was -5, and this morning it was -3, with a high of (ta daa) 24!!

This weather makes me wonder how country people survived these and worse temperatures in winter many years ago. During the harsh 1777 winter at Valley Forge conditions are reported to have been snowy with high temperatures in the 20s. Normal lows would have been in the teens. The Eye on the Sky weather journal often includes Vermont and NH winter reports from the 1800s, with occasional lows around -50, and that's not in the mountains!

How on earth did people stay warm without oil or propane furnaces? How many people would have died from exposure in Thursday’s wind? They had fireplaces, and if they were lucky they had woodstoves. Keeping the fire going was essential. Clothing, however, was not anywhere near as warm as what we have today. Indoor plumbing and ready hot water were non-existent, and men and women had outdoor work to do year round. I suspect that freezing was not an unusual cause of death.