Hurricane Harbor: Winter Storm Avery. Going With That Hashtag ...Deal With It. First Official Winter Storm in November BEFORE Thanksgiving. Get Ready For the Winter of 2018/2019 It's Gonna Be Wicked.

Well this pretty much says it all.

Say it ain't so....

Hurricane Jim is out playing in the snow.

TWC calls this Winter Storm Avery.

First Winter Storm of 2018/2019

The first of many.

A look at www.spaghettimodels.com tells it is as it is...

He's selling winter clothes....

..in time for Christmas presents.

This is definitely the year the Grinch came early!

It's even coming to South Florida.

This is a real picture my daughter sent me.

Broward County.

See the new Hard Rock Guitar building behind it...

Out the front car window it's blue skies, sunny.

In the rear view mirror moving in are dark skies.

The raining on one side of the street thing is true there.

Down in Miami Dade County it's blue skies for now.

But the Cold front will move through soon.

The front will bring "end of world" looking skies.

And then.... the weather will drop down to the 60s at night.

Further up the I95 road there's snow...

And Winter Storm Avery

If you put the word "winter" into Twitter...

..the FIRST thing that comes up is #winterstormAvery

Sorry but true and I tell the truth here.

I'm not gonna use every Winter Storm Name trust me.

But FIRSTS are always important and impressive.

The first things we experience we always remember.

Be it First Loves, First Children, First time we saw snow...

The First Hurricane...

Ask Mike about his First Tornado...

So going with Avery for this one.

Why not?

I was in Maryland yesterday.

There was no snow.

But they were brining the streets.

A cute girl in a gas station in Waldorf said to me:

"yeah they're being all melodramatic about it"

She admitted she did think she'd see some snow.

And the snow be falling still.

DC is having their first snow on November 15th...

...in 22 years.

Oh my goodness.

Talking since 1996...

Do you know where you were in 1996?

I do...

Being very silly on AOL with Fishing...

AOL Weather Message Boards.

Palm Beach Post Message Boards...

..where Jim Williams was posting :)

And others...

We felt grown up but we acted like kids.

Good times. Good friends still.

But seems a lifetime ago.

Now I live in North Carolina.

I wait and watch for winter storms..

...as well as Hurricanes of course.

Boy this state has it all ;)

Ice Storms too!

Up near the mountains not here in Raleigh today.

It was a very interesting trip. The younger generation really watches their money and takes #adulting very seriously. Neither of my daughters in the NYC area have cable news or shows. They watch on APPS and share wifi with friends and they do their own thing. I was cut off from TWC and CNN and FOX and no local Spectrum News with Weather on the Ones. Basically I was in a time bubble hanging out with my kids, grandson and sampling the newest kosher restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Dixie BBQ makes unreal good burgers, fries and dairy free shakes and Mr. Broadway serves awesome sushi with complimentary pickles and Cole Slaw (sounds weird but actually was great Cole Slaw) so that happened. I got my news from the scroll on Madison Square Garden, oddly interesting and of course on Twitter. Generally I switch news channels depending on the story, in truth they are all depressing and combative so being away was a nice vacation from the news. I'm still not sure who won in Florida, but then again pretty sure no one is sure on that.

In Raleigh the news is still about Hurricane Florence. The headline today was about Governor Cooper asking for an additional 5 BILLION Dollars in storm relief and a human interest story on shipwrecked crafts from Florence that are seemingly abandoned. A question asking if it's a matter of "Finders Keepers" mentioning that many of those ships have hazardous materials that need to be removed properly. Yes, the weather people moved on to the story of Hurricane Michael and then moved on to the Winter Storms of 2018 but in the North Carolina area it's all still about Florence. Trees weakened in the storm are more prone this winter to come down if there's a problem with Ice or a strong Winter Storm.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article221701410.html#storylink=latest_side

Today's heavy rain from the Winter Storm that was more winter up in the mountains than down in the Piedmont and Sandhills brought flooding in some areas prone to flooding. Ice up in the mountains is a big problem as they definitely got more than a "glazing" as suggested by many.

I'm home. I got flowers at Trader Joes and food for Shabbos and I'm actually cooking soup as I type this as the raw, cold day today screams "soup" with dinner. It's good to be home.

What I did want to add though is that this trip Up North was for my grandson Shmuel Ber who was having his haircut for the first time as part of a the traditional custom of having an Upshernish. In the Torah people are compared to trees and as we don't take fruit from a tree until it has produced fruit for three years we don't cut little boy's hair either until then. There is more to the story you can Google it but the family shows up, he gets lots of presents and is the center of attention in a way he will not be for another ten years until his Bar Mitzvah. My daughter lives "up state" and they love having a fire pit going in the backyard and doing BBQ. We had an awesome BBQ along with fancy cakes, treats and desserts. My grandson was happy and is still playing with his presents. I also got to see my older two daughters who live in the New York area.

Oddly though this trip seemed to be more about talking to older friends and relatives. My Mother-in-Law Zinnia is in a Rest Home in Maryland that is actually an old turn of the century 3 story mansion. It's really a "Rest Home" and they only have about fifteen people there with a nice staff, cheerful dining room, parlor, wrap around porch and real bedroom furniture in their private bedrooms. A lot nicer than the nursing home where her ex-husband was sent in Broward County next door to a large hospital to live out his final days. Marty was in a regular nice but generic and bland retirement home on a different floor from Zinnia until he needed extra care and hospice. A few months after he passed away the same nursing home was in the news as several patients died during Hurricane Irma when the electric went out and they were not moved to the big beautiful hospital next door for health care and that busy facility was in the news again later in the year for other problems. It's sad when an older, loved person needs more care than their family can give them and it's a hard decision what to do. The old Rest Home that was once a mansion up on the hill (think Peyton Place really) is a warm, loving facility giving the boarders a sense of dignity rather than sharing a hospital room with a stranger and being just another cog in the proverbial wheel. We stopped in on the way back to sit with her a while too and Zinnia being in Baltimore is closer to us than when she was in Florida and her only daughter lives nearby and comes and visits often which is wonderful.

We then went up to Woodridge near where my daughter is living so my husband could visit with one of his parent's oldest friends who is still alive, kicking and taken care of by neighbor in her house. I'm from Miami and I really prefer a Penthouse View, but my husband is from the country upstate where it's very different; I've never liked being there but this trip was awesome. She has this beautiful house on a hill that isn't that big but fits her perfectly, though she owned much land that she donated to the city to build a school. The Neversink River is off in the distance flowing fast visible now thorough the trees that no longer have many leaves up there. She has old, old books her mother left her and we sat and talked for hours. Her family has been in this country forever, the old country being "Winthrop Mass near Boston" though she thinks her family came from somewhere near Vilna. She's feisty, she says she knows she should give up smoking in her late 80s "but it's a habit" so she sits with her cigarettes, lights them as if she is smoking, holds them but really doesn't inhale. Sharp as a whip and funny. She reminded me a bit of my Grandmother (who did not smoke) in that she could tell quite the tale and take you back to where she was at that point in time. Bright blue eyes that darted around watching and taking everything in... and posing with my husband for a picture as if she was a movie star. Awesome really.

On the way back I sat at the "Rest Home" with May who is really named Mary but there is a Mary there so it's confusing and they asked her if they could call her May. The woman was 92 years old and barely had a wrinkle (she says she never used bar soap to wash her face....) and could tell stories about growing up in Brooklyn and had just gone to New York for a Christening for a Great Grandson and said she is not going "up there again" but I'm thinking she will. It's always amazing when you see older people who are alive, aware and vibrant... it's inspiring.

The truth is you never really know what the future is and being depressed over things in the past is well depressing.... why we don't live in the present and enjoy it I don't know. Many of us do ... many do not and I thought much on this trip on why we worry so much. When I say "we" I mean me and my brother though I know because we were raised by a mother who worried about everything. So we end up walking a balance between taking chances (like storm chasing, traveling, moving about the country, pushing our safety zone) and then reverting to worrying behavior on everything. I actually thought deeply on this at the Ohel in Queens where the Lubavitcher Rebbe is buried and is a holy site where people pray. Worrying takes so much time away from us, it robs us of what is going on in the present as we are in a rush to worry on next week, next month and next year. It's one of those places where you go thinking you know what you will pray for and then suddenly all these other real thoughts rush in and you find yourself really praying on what has most been bothering you yet you couldn't put it into words.

So.... that was my trip. I'm back. I'll post on weather as it's evolving and currently we are evolving from the Hurricane Season to a Winter that will be devilish in it's own way. El Nino is producing one heck of a Subtropical Jet or as many say a "Southern Jet" and it will ramp up storms in the South as well as enhance ones Up North. Joe Bastardi (I know love him or hate him... he's a good meteorologist) has been screaming for this to be a cold winter for months. All the models now show that and it's overproducing in the same way that Florence wasn't expected to be much more than a Fish Storm off Africa but crossed the Atlantic at a high latitude, becoming a Major Hurricane and making landfall in the Carolinas. Everyone said the Caribbean was "dead" this year and yet it produced Hurricane Michael one of the strongest storms in a long time. We had a good hour or so of snow flurries in Upstate NY with no notice of them showing up in the forecast and this early Winter Storm Avery has over produced winter weather across many states and it's still evolving.

That's life.

If you have hurricane supplies left, hold onto them for this Winter as we will see quite a few dangerous Winter Storms. Many insisted November would show a warm up after a colder than normal October and guess what? There was no warm up and none in sight other than this weekend the sun will come out and shine bright in Raleigh, but we will be dressing right. Speaking of Dressing I picked up a Turkey at a grocery store in Brooklyn named BINGO and am going through recipes for which to use this Shabbos and which to use this coming week for Thanksgiving.

That's my life. I know I've been away but being away is good as it gives you the chance to reflect, breathe, see kids, eat sushi and hamburgers and way too much junk food while driving, buy presents for some of the grandchildren, children and sons and daughters in law. And when you come home it's so good to be home. And though snow is not in my immediate forecast I know it will show up soon. Below is a Map by an online friend who is good at making maps and forecasting weather. He's smart, quick, fun and a good dresser. Hoping to say hi in person next trip to New York in January rather than simply passing by quick :) Nice map.