The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
View of wild winter weather from a hospital bed
We had a really appreciable snowstorm in midDecember — fast-falling, light and deep.
I was in the hospital for it. The window in my room let me see some of the hospital’s big mechanical infrastructure. Hospital employees walked out on a little deck among big pipes to watch the storm I missed entirely.
I figured this would be OK. I’d be home soon enough to see the whiteness. But hernia surgery got complicated by pneumonia and there I stayed. My second room in the hospital, nurses said, had a nice view. But the bed and chair in the room were aligned to let me see a nice view of a hospital wall.
On Christmas Day, when the rains poured and the temperatures rose, I thankfully rode by ambulance to a rehab center near where I live on the eastern edge of Litchfield County. When I was loaded into the ambulance, I blessedly breathed fresh air and felt rain on my face. Ditto the unloading.
The rehab center — where I stayed for four days before coming home — was lovely. But because of COVID-19, I was confined to my room. The window there let me see mostly wall and a corner of sky.
Hospitals are wonderful places to recover from operations and illnesses. But they divorce you from the real world of wind and air and sun and wild winter weather.
And in December, it was a little wild.
The snowstorm was the biggest we had in the state in years.
“The rate of snowfall was a tremendous amount,” said Bill Jacquemin, chief meteorologist with the Connecticut Weather Center in Danbury. “It was two inches as hour,’’
“There was 14.5 inches of snow in Danbury,” said Gary Lessor, director of the Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. “Other places in the state got 16-17 inches.’’
And the Christmas Day storm, brought rising temperatures, and a couple of inches of rain enough to wash away all that nice snow. And it had serious wind.
“We had winds at about 47 mph in Danbury,” Lessor said. “In other places it got up to 70 mph.”
(I have Danbury friends who had a tree get knocked over by the wind. The falling tree ripped all the electric wires from their home. Until an electrician arrived a couple of days later, their holiday home was cold and blanketed.)
But weather-watchers, winter-lovers rejoice, Things may get interesting.
Every winter, forecasters make long-range forecasts. This winter is being driven by the La Nina phenomenon, a cooling of the Pacific Ocean. It promised us a warm, wet winter.
But the caveats everyone issued was this: We can’t predict what the polar vortex — the vast circling pool of Arctic air — will do.
Now, it’s starting to do
We can’t predict what the polar vortex — the vast circling pool of Arctic air — will do. Now, it’s starting to do something. Some forecasters predict it will bring cold weather the Great Lakes region, the Central Plains states and the Northeast.
something. Rather than staying in place, it’s shifting and splitting. The odds are now are that the last week of January and a good part of February will be gnarly.
“It’s shifting over toward Russia and China,’’ said senior meteorologist Bob Smerbeck of AccuWeather, the regional weather forecasting center in State College, Pa.
But Andrew Orrison a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center, which is part of the National Weather Service, said part of that polar shift will branch off.
“There’s a piece of energy connected to the polar vortex that will come
south,’’ Orrison said.
That cold weather will probably hit the Great Lakes region and the Central Plains states. Almost certainly, it will smear across the Northeast states.
Orrison said another huge mass of unpredictable air — the North Atlantic Oscillation — has entered a negative phase. That, too, will shunt colder air our way.
The good thing is that the Polar Vortex and the Canadian air it will push our way is warmer than normal. It will be cold, but not frostbite, pipe-freezing cold.
Add to this the weather patterns that have already in place.
“It’s going to be active,’’ said Jacquemin of the Connecticut Weather Center.
My house has lots of nice widows, I’m still recuperating, but at home. I won’t be snowshoeing or cross-country skiing or shoveling, but I’ll be able to watch at will. If it sleets, I’ll be there to hear it rattle.
It will also be nice to be reminded at home complex weather is. Pacific waters, polar air masses, North Atlantic oscillations — all far away — give us our daily share of sun and clouds and snow. We are lucky to see it.