That ain't Celsius, either!

That was the temperature at around 5 am today, Tuesday, January 21st in Colebrook, CT. 
It had been a mild winter up until then, so in the words of underrated poet/guitarist  Joe Walsh:

"I can't complain but sometimes I still do."

For you red-blooded Americans who disdain the Metric System, that converts to -21.2 Celsius.

Using either system, today's temperature is well above Absolute Zero,  minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which all nuclear motion stops and matter would cease to exist.

I bring that up because: Am I the only one who has noticed that the national news features weather stories a lot more than it used to when I was a kid? And they like to scare people. Admittedly I was kid a long time ago, but still.

When I was a kid they used to have stories about revolutions in Ceylon and stuff like that. These days the news people are worried about ratings, so Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) is out, and whether Taylor Swift's lipstick matched the color of the Kansas City Chiefs helmets is featured.

Aside: I am now officially tired of the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce romance. Lots of people have a significant other. I'm also tired of Travis Kelce's brother. If I want to see guys who look like him, there's a biker bar on Rt 44 in New Hartford.  Also included on the over exposed list is Peyton Manning and  Eli Manning. Although I do admire Peyton Manning forcing ESPN to let his dorky kid brother tag along, I won't be watching them coach flag football at the NFL All-Pro extravaganza.

Back to the weather: The national news wants to scare people to get higher ratings so they have come up with new terms: It's cold today. It was this cold thirty years ago, but today is a: Polar Vortex!

Didn't have Polar Vortex's back in my day. We just put on our Bronco Nagurski long underwear and carried on.

And it's not just cold in the Eastern half of the U.S.: 87 million people are At Risk! At risk? Of what? At risk of it being winter? Al Roker loves to tell me I'm at risk, and so does Jim Cantore. Another 453.37 degrees colder and all matter will cease to exist. That's when I'll consider myself At Risk!

Another new term the TV guys use at any opportunity: Atmospheric River.
That means it's gonna rain a lot, not that Bill Gates has finally perfected his Secret Weather machine and is able to raise the Mississippi River 30,000 feet in the stratosphere and dump it on a state he doesn't like.

Well, maybe it's just the cold weather that's got me cranky. Good day to stay inside and write my next book.

Note to language nerds: I know that the plural of vortex is vertices, but it seems a little high falutin' for this audience.

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