have you ever witnessed lightning and thunder during a blizzard?
i have now!
Says S. White seems to be blanketing Massachusetts. Her flight out of Logan tonight was delayed until tomorrow morning. My sister also reports large amount of fluffy in Williamstown. They had over a foot by this morning.
In contrast, the second snow of the season for balmy NJ is much less impressive. We got about an inch over last night. By noon today, it melted down to about half inch, and the bottom quarter is slush. Shoveling was wet and heavy (compared to last weekend, when the snow was powdery and light). And by the time I got home this evening, the tiny bit of slush that didn't evaporate had turned into ice. (Only about 2/3 of our driveway receives sun light, and that part got nice and dry; but the 1/3 that stays in eternal shadow, that is closest to the garage door, is exceedingly iced up.
Back to the winter lightnings. From NOAA comes the research of Hunter, Underwood, Holle, and Mote regarding Winter Lighting in the Southeast U.S. and its Relation to Heavy Frozen Precipitation. While the effect itself is not terribly well-studied, there are enough of the events so conclude that lightnings during "frozen precipitation" (I love that phrase, I shall start referring snow as such from now on) is not an extremely rare event. Perhaps part of the reason that it is less observed is that snow reduces visibility more so than rain does.
In other news, I discovered a bug in the university computer system used for library records. Normally, in the math/physics library, a patron can borrow a book for a month, with an option to renew it once for another month. Now, if a book is in the patron's possession, it is expected that after another patron placed a recall notice on the book, the borrower will return the book in 10 days. Logic dictates that if a patron placed a recall notice on the book that is due back in fewer than 10 days, the book should be expected to be returned at the original time. i.e., if I have a book due tomorrow, and Jeff places a recall notice on it yesterday, I should have to return it tomorrow, with the possibility of renewing it for an additional 8 days if I haven't used my renewal option on that book. But that is not what happens. The computer system seems to blindly set the due date of the book to 10 days after the date of the recall notice regardless of the current due-date. A particular book in my possession was recalled on Wednesday. I already had it for 2 months, and today I was supposed to return it. I got an email stating that "another patron has recalled this book, please return it by the 17th of December". Checking the online account management webpage, it lists the new due date of the book as "Recalled: 17 December (09 December)" which I suppose means that the new due date is the 17th which is changed from the 9th because of a recall. And then I double checked with the librarian, and indeed I can technically, according to the computer system, keep the book until the 17th. I returned it anyway.
Two lessons are learned:
Via S from Neil Gaiman's journal, Christopher Robin is to be replaced by a "tomboy girl" in the new Disney animation about the going-ons of the 100 Acre Woods. USA Today carries a report. I will be boycotting the new shows, and I strongly suspect that my sisters will do the same. So good job, Disney, in effort to "bring an older audience to an iconic franchise", you've just lost three fans. Geez, it has all gone down-hill since Sterling Holloway passed away in '92. (Holloway was the voice of Pooh, he passed away November 22, 1992. The original narrator for "W-t-P and the Blustery Day", Sebastian Cabot, died August 22, 1977; John Fiedler, a.k.a. Piglet, passed away on Saturday June 25 of this year, following Paul Winchell, Tigger, who died a day earlier; Howard Morris, who played Gopher, died also this year on May 21; Kanga, or Barbara Luddy, April 1, 1979; Rabbit, Junius Matthews, January 18, 1978; Hal Smith, Own, January 28, 1994. Anyone know about Ralph Wright? He played Eeyore in the original Disney animation, and the last one he starred in was Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore made in 1983...) I think the best way to address this blasphemy is though a quote of S, quoting a review of some other movie that she once saw, on this subject:
an old classic is raped, murdered, and buried