We got a warning; will we follow it?

All the winter weather forecasts we have received in recent days have made me think back to July of 1995 – specifically that five-day period in mid-month when the weather became so hot that the number of heat-related fatalities shot up significantly.

 

What I remember of that heat wave was one particular pundit describing it as an anomaly in which – for a few days – weather conditions shifted to the point where Chicago became Saudi Arabia.

AS IN FOR those days, we had the kind of heat they routinely experience in the deserts of the Middle East. There, the locals know how to cope with it.

In Chicago, we were caught off guard – resulting in the 485 official fatalities due to the heat (and the city Health Department estimate that some 739 people in excess of the norm had died).

Now what does any of this have to do with the extreme cold we’re expected to suffer through in coming days?

For all I know, some people are looking at the prospect of a “20-below” temperature (as in Fahrenheit, not Celsius) and wishing they could have a blast of 100-degree-plus heat. The Chicago Teachers Union on Sunday was already demanding that the Chicago Public Schools be closed, and schools officials complied late in the afternoon.

BUT MY POINT is that we’re getting a jolt of weather that usually isn’t typical for this part of Planet Earth. I’ve seen the term “Chi-beria” used to describe what Chicago will experience (as in Siberia), while others are saying we will have temperatures lower than the Arctic Circle.

As in the North Pole.

 

 

No wonder Santa Claus makes a point of rushing around the world to give away presents. He’s freezing his red-clad butt off the rest of the year.

We’re going to be cold. We’re being advised to stay indoors as much as possible. A brief trip to the supermarket on Saturday saw me having to deal with endless lines – even though I was just trying to use the “express” to pick up a couple of items.

 

 

I WASN’T ALONE in wanting to NOT have to make the trip (which in my case can be as short as a one-block walk to a Jewel, longer if I choose to shop at a different store) in the potential chill of 10-below.

Let’s only hope that people have not only been paying attention to these advance reports, but that they’re taking them seriously.

I’m sure we’ll have a few people who are convinced that the weather reports are a whole lot of hype, and will say to themselves, “How cold could it actually get?” If too many people take that kind of attitude, that is when we have the potential for the body count to increase.

Although I’ll be willing to concede the one significant difference between the two situations.

MUCH OF THE body count in 1995 was among elderly people who lived “shut-in” type lives who should have got out of their inadequately-cooled homes and found some place cooler to pass the time.

The coming days will be a case where we all will be encouraged to live the “shut-in” lifestyle. So long as we don’t get some sort of outage that causes people to lose heat, we should be capable of coping.

Except that in severe weather, there’s always the possibility of an outage – and the fact that the inclement weather will interfere with emergency crew efforts to rectify the problem.

The real question might be whether we experience a record low – bottoming, so to speak, the conditions of Jan. 20, 1985. That was when a 27-below temperature combined with 25 mile-per-hour winds for a wind chill of 77-below.

WE GOT THROUGH that blast (also from the Arctic that swept its way across the nation, just like what’s happening this week). I’m sure we’ll make it through this one too -- and hopefully without any record-setting for fatalities.

 

 

Even if it means we’re going to have to put up with exaggerated stories for decades to come from people feeling the need to prove their fortitude by telling us of how they braved the cold of the coming days.

  -30-

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Take your pick. It's thoughts of "Summertime" coming in just a few months that will get me through the next few days! Or, you can consider Gov. Pat Quinn's advice for coping with the next few days.

Mother Nature reminds us periodically of who really runs things – it ain’t us!

Never before in my life have I been thankful to be woken up at about 3 a.m. by a sudden surge of noise and light.

No, I didn't see ...

That’s what happened to me early Tuesday, because I was among those who managed to get their electrical power knocked out for a few hours by Monday night’s sudden storm.

I HAVE TO confess that the storm itself didn’t seem like much to me – a heavy rain is all.

I happened to be in my broken-down (but fully paid-for) automobile when the hard rain and stronger-than-usual winds suddenly came. My instinct told me that trying to drive in it could be risky.

So I pulled over and parked the car, then sat in the vehicle for about 20 minutes until things settled down to the point where it was just a normal rainfall.

I finished my trip (work-related) a few minutes later, and by the time work was “done,” the rain had stopped altogether. So I drove home not thinking much about it.

IT RAINED. RAIN is a part of our normal weather. It helped cool off the humidity somewhat.

But when I got home, I discovered that my home neighborhood had been devastated by those stronger-than-usual winds. There were branches blown all over the place.

Many of those branches managed to hit things. In my case, they knocked out the electrical power.

Which in my case was professionally devastating, because I had some work-related writing to do. It was on deadline. And the lack of electricity meant I didn’t have the wireless Internet connection at home that enables me to work there at my convenience.

... either of their big-game goals

AS I SEARCHED for a place with a wireless connection that did NOT lose electricity, I couldn’t help but notice how darkened the neighborhood was. Particularly odd since we’re at the time of year when daylight is at its longest.

My neighbors wound up using the weather as an excuse to party. The whole extended family swarmed their way out of the air conditioner-less home (no electricity), pulled out the barbecue grill, and the kids were running up and down the block in play.

I felt like I had to avoid hitting both fallen branches AND little children. Fortunately, I succeeded.

And when I got about one mile from my humble abode, I found a Starbucks’ coffee house. I’m not usually one to spend big bucks for their pretentious cups of coffee. Nor do I think much of people who spend hours on end with their laptop computers or other electronic devices – leeching off the wireless connection.

She can be mean when she wants to be!

BUT ON MONDAY, I became one of them. Although I made a point of getting my essential work done within a half-hour, then leaving (not long before they were getting ready to close).

When I returned home, the place was still dark. It was humid. It was miserable.  And the answer is "no," I didn't see any of the Chicago Blackhawks' Stanley Cup-winning victory over Boston. But in the dark, there was nothing one could do – other than stumble my way through my humble abode to the bedroom. Where I laid in my sweat, and ultimately drifted off to sleep.

Until! My alarm clock suddenly lit up (3:11 a.m., it was), the air conditioning kicked back on and a couple of lights that had been on when the power went out suddenly flickered to life.

The rest of my night was a little more comfortable. But I have to confess I struggled to remain awake Tuesday morning. It was NOT a good night’s sleep.

AS I WRITE this, I still have a few gadgets whose inner clocks are going to have to be re-set.

Although I learned that a colleague of mine who also lost power still had not had it restored as of the noon-hour Tuesday. And as I drove around my neighborhood, I still see some crews working to clear fallen brush and restore electricity to those whose power-less experience extended into a Day Two!

So as much as I want to gripe and grouse about a miserable night, a part of me can’t help but feel fortunate that it didn’t turn out worse. That’s something we all should keep in mind.

One little twist of wind can revert us back to the conditions of the days when all of this land around here was nothing but open frontier.

  -30-

And here I just got a new smart phone that supposedly has a quality camera

On the one hand, I happen to believe that anybody who feels the need to whip out their portable phone to use the built-in camera to take pictures of anything that happens to capture their fancy is engaging in pretty insipid behavior.

My new 'toy,' and soon I'll have a restriction



Then again, I do believe people have a right to act in ways that are stupid. It’s their choice.

WHICH IS WHY I can’t help but think that a bill now pending before Gov. Pat Quinn is such a gross overreaction. I don’t see the need to codify the fact that anybody who feels the need to pull out their portable camera and take pictures of an accident scene is being insipid.

The bill in question got its final vote of approval in the General Assembly on Monday. The Illinois House backed a measure making it illegal for any automobile driver to make a call with their portable phone within 500 feet of an auto accident scene where emergency vehicles have flashing lights.

It also would be illegal for people to send pictures and video messages while driving their cars – regardless of whether there’s an auto accident occurring nearby.

In theory, there is an exemption that allows someone in a car to pull out their cell phone and make a call to report the emergency situation. But I can’t help but think that if there are ambulances and police squad cars around the area with their lights flashing, it means they’re already aware of the accident.

SO WHERE’S THE real exemption?

Personally, I would never feel compelled to whip out my phone to snap a picture of an auto accident I happened to drive past – even though the Nokia Lumia smart phone I got just last week (my old Blackberry completely died) supposedly has as one of its selling points a higher-quality camera than most hand-held phones have.

Whenever I see people walking down the street feeling the need to suddenly snap a picture of something that they randomly encountered in life, all too often I can’t help but think it’s such a waste of time.

I usually don’t think to say anything, figuring it’s their business what they do – or what they choose to clutter up their phones’ memory with. So I can sort of see the idea of a law addressing these situations.

IT’S JUST THAT this bill seems like such overkill – even if its backers claim their concern is reducing the chance of someone causing yet a second accident because they were paying too much attention to the first one they were trying to shoot pictures of.

Besides, a part of me can’t help but wonder if this is someone trying to come up with yet another law making it a sordid act to take pictures of police in action.

We already have those laws that make video without police permission a potential felony, and it is a good thing that the courts have shown themselves to be hostile toward the idea of enforcing the letter of that law!

Does somebody really fear that somebody is going to capture a moment on digital that might make law enforcement conduct at an accident scene look less than honorable? An embarrassing moment caught for posterity (or at least until the camera owner gets bored with the shot and deletes it)!

WE HAVE SERIOUS problems confronting our state Legislature. I’d like to see some effort put by our politicians into addressing them.

So while I understand that our legislators are capable of addressing many issues at once, I can’t help but wonder how much brain matter that could have gone into balancing a budget or properly funding Medicaid or pensions got put into addressing the “scourge” of those handheld phone cameras snapping shots of police milling around an accident scene?

  -30-