Winter is BACK.... And Mean and Cold and Cat 5 Wind Chills. Some thoughts on Weather and General Hospital & Social Media

I'm back from my trip to New York. Someone in the family had surgery and they are doing well and I went in to be there for moral support and to show my love. While there I saw a few family members and did some ice cold sightseeing in the Pomona Height's area. This picture is an icy waterfall as snow up on the ledge was melting, falling into the cracks, freezing, melting, freezing and covering the plants in small icicles. It was beautiful, it was freezing cold. We drove by and I saw out of the corner of my eye what looked like a crystal plant and then realized it was covered in ice (Miami girl here...) so we drove back and the daughter that liked to chase storms with me was chasing winter views and pictures. No we didn't get out and examine it, it was freezing.

The things you see that you don't expect to see.

In the sunlight it was crystal bright.

Tonight winter is back and in charge again.

In Minnesota to Ohio it's frigid.

This dives down to the South.

It's 61 degrees in Hollywood Florida...

...going down to 49 degrees.

Okay it's warmer than Detroit!

And we aren't even talking on the wind chills.

Here's the link to use tonight and tomorrow.

http://hp2.wright-weather.com/icons/us_chill.gif

If you live "up there" beware it's dangerously cold.

I know there has been a lot of hype......

To be honest people need advice not hype.

Please read it explains "wind chills"

https://www.weather.gov/bou/windchill

Detroit is NOT St. Paul Minnesota!

That's -20 degrees.

Wind Chill -47 degrees.

I cannot even wrap my head around it.

It gets below 47 degrees and I get cold.

The truth is winter comes and goes and this is normal. It gets cold early, it warms up and then winter comes back like that friend you didn't expect to show back up on your doorstep or bad sushi salad! It comes back. And often when it's been unusually warm it SNAPS BACK big time. In this case it is due to warm up in many places in a few days so that's good news. People outside not dressed properly could easily die when it's this cold. That includes animals and all living things. This is one of those times when the hype is for real, but it's really for those places where the wind chills are near zero or below. Yet I know people in West Palm Beach terrified of this winter's sudden Arctic Dive who are panicking. We are the world, social media makes us all feel closer and it's not gonna be 20 degrees or feel like it in Miami but it still will feel colder than you are used to so .... so proceed accordingly. 

Note how far the freeze line goes.

www.spaghettimodels.com

Lot's of sites up there on that site above.

Most of the USA is below the freeze line.

Will see tomorrow how we survive this winter weather.

And I hope and pray people do take it seriously.

And then what?

Is this the start of something big?

A new pattern?

Or an anomaly and it warms up.

In the Carolinas snow is often promised...

...but you can rely that the rains will come.

South Florida has had a rainy, wet winter.

New York City people feel snowless..

...though they have been dusted with snow.

In the midwest they can't get rid of it.

Europe was buried under it.

And in a month or so the tulips will push up...

Spring will be upon us.

A lady in the market today said "I"m waiting for Spring"

Aren't we all?

That's the nature of the seasons....

We want them to come faster and then......

....we start praying on the next season to come fast.

Life goes on.

As for me I have been in a sort of news, weather and sports black out as where I was staying the wifi was a weak signal, my phone service went from full service to no service for no apparent reason and I was on the move often. I watched the last winter storm come rolling through into Brooklyn from the Verrazano Bridge that swayed a bit in the wind while tropical like rain came at us sidewards. Then from a tall building in Brooklyn I saw the sun come out and light up the New York City skyline. Far off on the horizon the city shone under a silver sky, through the raindrops and next to a beautiful rainbow. 

On Friday we went shopping and I caught this picture.

Winter cold and mountains in the distance.

And tonight they are blanketed in snow.

Stay warm under your blankets.

I have a special satin blanket that's warm.

Well it keeps me warm I leave it on top of the covers.

What do you do to stay warm?

Drink soup?

Sip tea?

Warning

Non - Weather related rant

Social Media

General Hospital

GFS vs EURO

Oh Lord.... stop fighting!

Now I'm back home, under the covers watching a show on my TV on my cable that my young Millenials don't use as they do HULU and NetFlix and YouTube usually. While away I follow what happens in the world on Twitter. I also missed General Hospital  which is fun to watch and have on while putting together dinner. So while away I follow what's going on in Twitter, just easier to retrieve news and follow. Got to tell you if you think Weather Twitter is bad, oh my gosh you haven't seen anything. So many haters... People holding on to obsessions on characters no longer on the show who they want them to bring back and I mean "NOW!!" showing old clips of their favorite scenes. They love Franco or hate Franco (I like him and yes I followed the actor on One Life to Live) and I don't mean just hate I mean long, long diatribes worse than arguing about Trump and Pelosi and Hilary. There is more of a Soap Opera on General Hospital Twitter than on the show and they have strong feelings about the writers who they all seem to know by name, some guy name Frank and they seem to feel someone is trying to destroy the show (oh no) and oh gosh worse than arguing over the EURO and the GFS model. I missed the big Jasam reunion which doesn't upset me much as I preferred Drew and Sam to Jason and Sam. Let's get real Sam could never totally commit to Jason and Jason always ran off to save Carly and Sonny. Drew loved Sam, brought out something soft and beautiful in her while she remained tough. This is what I don't understand about GH...they spent years building up Drew and Sam into this beautiful couple who loved each other greatly and then they ripped it away bringing back stone cold Jason and I don't get it. I watch.... I watch when I can but I don't understand. I like the Peter guy (maybe it's the name) and I don't get so emotionally involved. I don't say hateful things and attack the writers, producers and actors personally.  

And the reason I bring this up is it makes me wonder what goes on in this world? Every person who has a Weather App or can watch a satellite loop thinks they are an expert meteorologist and student mets think they are all the next Jim Cantore and everyone thinks they know what will happen next and if it will snow in Cincinnati and they argue when someone (a well known reliable meteorologist) says something they don't like on Twitter such as "it probably won't snow" which basically is "OH NO!!!" an insult that in the old days someone would result in a duel at sunset by the cold river. 

Social media is wonderful and fun and I've been around since the early days of AOL and the Weather Message Boards but come on people get a grip! It's not the total end of the world and the guy who plays Franco is a great actor, focus on some other character and stop begging for Anna and Duke to get back together (he was never worthy of her anyway) and stop making Laura into the next matronly Monica who can be grandmother and matriarch of the family, she may be mayor but she's a bit boring like this... give her something fun to do. Stop threatening mets who take away your snow and by the way Mother Nature is the problem not some met who reads the models correctly and won't promise you it's gonna snow just to get likes on Twitter (rolling eyes) and if you got a problem with the Government Shut Down or Truce... force the congress people to show up in DC because the place looked like a Ghost Town on Monday when we sailed through as if the city was closed; I checked Twitter to make sure there wasn't an alien invasion somewhere or a terror attack. Obviously no one is really working in DC just yet, waiting for the Super Bowl to be over and go back to digging into their boots and saying "NO!!" the way my grandson does when you offer him chicken!

Social media can be the best thing that ever happen or the worst. Be part of the solution not the problem. 

Stay warm, before you know it I'll be posting on the tropics and Spring will have burst through everywhere in the Northern hemisphere and life goes on as my friend is prone to saying (yeah I know you say that) and enjoy the music.

In a world before HULU and NetFlix and YouTube and the EURO model and the GFS model and in a world where only friends argued if Luke and Laura should be a Super Couple because well he raped her before they became lovers and Franco had a brain tumor removed and he's not the character he played on One Life to Live anymore.... 

Good to be home, at least for this week anyway.

Besos BobbiStorm

Dreaming of Tropical Dreams on a cold night in the Carolinas

Ps Life does go on after our first loves (tho Laura was married to Scotty before Luke so maybe Luke was her second love but I digress) and whether Anna is with Robert or Duke (he died, really) or her new love who she is cute with .. life goes on. She was really young back then.... so let's look back on Laura and Luke way before we had great weather models we could argue about.

And when it comes to Anna... that actress can dance.

See she can dance with anyone....

But......before life at General Hospital she was in one of the most iconic movies ever

Keep on dancing.........   but leave that Frank guy alone on General Hospital and stop fighting!

:)

Tornadoes South Florida. Broward County. A Day in My Social Media Life. Pictures. News When Ever You Want it in 2018

April 10th, 2018.

Yesterday the day that was...

The weather got a little wild yesterday in South Florida. Suddenly without warning and without advisories the wind began to whoosh, the sky turned extremely dark and the TV scrolled a sudden "Tornado Warning" for parts of Broward County. That means everyone on the County Line between Miami and Hollywood saw the fast developing wicked weather.

I was on the phone with my brother discussing our Passover Vacation (humor there) and he sent me the radar roll. I told him there would be tornadoes soon and I could see a hook echo forming between the "u" and the "d" in the word Ft. Lauderdale on the radar. Well it's more complicated than that as his mother-in-law recently passed away leaving them some cruise credits so he finally took his "Passover Cruise." I went to Miami to finally see the youngest grandchildren for Passover. We were comparing notes on Passover but moved on to the fast passing weather. Within seconds his TV began to scroll a Tornado Warning for his area (see above) and the adjacent area where several of my kids live.  He immediately took a picture of the lake behind his house. So I sent a message via WhatsApp to the family group warning the kids. They often have 100s of Apps but until someone in a WhatsApp tells them there's a weather event they don't know. As my oldest daughter and my youngest daughter explained to friends recently "don't need a weather app ... cause my mother..." yup they just wait for the phone to blow up from everyone posting pics on Whatsapp.

Within minutes one daughter grabbed her baby went outside and took pics. Is that a great pic or what?

The oldest son driving carpool took this picture of the line moving across South Broward County (basically North Miami these days as most of Miami Dade County just oozed North across the County line much like the tornado.) Looks like a May Monsoon but no it was the line that spawned the tornado. 

Then the Aventura son who just became a father grabbed his camera and sent this picture with the tag (the wind is pushing his car) as he was driving back from Broward near the tornado. His wife and sister told him "not to say that" which I suppose is a good method of dealing with stress. He then began sending pictures from the Wizard of Oz and making jokes. He knows his weather at least....

(not my child above...)

Yup, that's how yesterday played out in South Florida with tornado warnings popping up on the TV screen and Whatsapp Gone Wild and confirmation this morning of 2 relatively small tornadoes touching down briefly yesterday. One Twister was literally at FLL airport which is actually in Hollywood Florida where my kids now live but what is in a name? A relatively small tornado being relative to where you are when you are taking the video of the air moving in circles in your nice little gated community. Since moving back to Miami my older son has now had a hurricane and a tornado hover over his house. Great video but he's very private so not posting the video of the street on which he lives. My grandson is cute but no pics as that daughter is very private. Notice a trend here? Weather pictures always allowed on social media. Young kids use social media wisely. Baby Boomers just keep posting crap on Facebook thinking "no one will see it but my chosen friends" because they don't understand the screen shot is forever. Nothing personal to Baby Boomers but they can be a bit naive. They must have drunk the Kool Aid on "peace love and happiness" a bit too much to understand the real world the way Millenials do. I was raised in the 80s in LA personally. I know that because a Facebook Quiz told me so. And, you know what? In a way it's true as I really did "grow up" while living in LA in the 1980s. It's odd when LA seems more sane than life in Miami in the fast lane. 

I'm "home" in Raleigh packing for Seattle where I will be for a week because according to my smart grandson in Seattle his father "guilted me into it" (love that kid) and no he did not "guilt me into it" I love being in Seattle with him and his family. I love it beyond words. I just do not love packing again (it's wintry there the summer suitcase for Miami won't work) and I just put the house back together after getting back from Florida. I get home after the Mercury Retrograde ends (but who is counting besides Fishing and Me?) and then I have some time to relax before the holiday of Shavous and obsessing over the soon to come Hurricane Season. 

As I said yesterday in the blog.... When you have cold fronts pushing down across Florida where they hang out waiting for the next impulse in the Gulf of Mexico to slide through you get that much closer to the Hurricane Season. Before the Hurricane Season is the May Monsoon if you are really keeping track here. It's been dry in South Florida they could use rain. I asked my brother what if it's a "Dry May" (seen collectively as a possible problem come Hurricane Season) and he said "you cry in September" as it then depends on where and when that large huge Bermuda High sets up in relation to Florida.

Have a great day. Note it was on the news too. Some people (Baby Boomers posting cat pics and ranting on Facebook) still watch the news. If they went on Snapchat they'd know Rachel took the baby down to the pool, Shayna went out somewhere and is tired as... and my son is finishing his thesis at FIU on Architecture and enjoying life with his classmates while they are all still together before they have to use social media to stay in touch. 

That's the theme here. Staying in touch with social media. Through life events be they weather related or not it's the way of our world these days. I'm changing planes in Chicago because back when I made the ticket I figured winter would be gone by April 11th. Haha silly Miami girl... Everyone keep good thoughts please. I want to fall asleep in Seattle early tomorrow morning. Bought this book for my trip. Aside from the cover .... it had me at the first paragraph. A friend passes on after leading an incredible life doing what he loved most. Not a bad life, plus he shared what he was learning with others. It's all about sharing...

Much love.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

Time is slip sliding away.

One day I'm going to write a book called either "Me and Fishing" or "Playing with Peter" or "Living a Stormy Life" or....   gotta pack. Yes I bought a book because I'm old school and love turning the pages and the feel of the paper.