Snow day

In a few minutes from now, snow will begin falling--again--in eastern Pennsylvania. We're to expect 3 to 6 inches of snow before capping Wednesday morning with ice and freezing rain. The forecasters are warning that travel will dangerous, schools will be canceled, trees will be knocked down and electric service may be interrupted. Then we are to expect yet another snowstorm on Saturday night into Sunday morning.

We're not used to this.

For one thing, snow has been on the ground since mid-January. Our AccuWeather forecasting service says that snow will stay through at least February 10. Songbirds are having trouble with this. Their natural sources of seed and dried fruit, whether on the ground or in trees and shrubs, has all but run out. In between snow storms, we've had near-zero overnight temperatures (Fahrenheit. of course; if only we had Celsius single-digit temperatures!)

In nearly all winters, eastern Pennsylvania will get snow--sometimes a lot--then it will melt. We'll then have another snowstorm. It will melt again before the next snowstorm arrives. Not so this year.

Songbirds in eastern Pennsylvania aren't used to this weather. Chickadees, one of my favorite songbirds, seem fewer these days. I hope they haven't died. Chickadees eat 10 percent of their body weight each day so they can have enough energy to last them through the bitterly cold night. I've been trying to help them to survive by keeping my bird feeders constantly stocked with high-fat black oil sunflower seed.

Snowy Owl

At the same time, eastern Pennsylvania has been seeing Snow Owls, a bird that breeds in the Arctic in the summer and winters in southern Canada and northern New York and the northern Great Lakes states. This winter they've even been seen as far south as Florida. One ornithologist called this "one of the most dramatic national history spectacles in the Northeast and it is a story that continues to be told."

OK. I agree that cold and snowy weather doesn't seem extraordinary in the Minnesota, Dakotas or Montana. I remember a co-worker of mine who lived in North Dakota; she told me that she used to wake up at 3 a.m. every night to make sure her automobile battery was still charged.

Forecasters in Pennsylvania are forever talking about "Canadian high pressure systems" when describing the next blast of near-zero weather, so I can only try to imagine the weather that exists in Manitoba and Saskatchewan where these travails originate. And the snow and ice is worse there, too. There's drifting snow and, in Ontario and Quebec, ice has destroyed high-tension electric towers, causing blackouts that lasted for weeks.

So in comparison to that, we in eastern Pennsylvania are wimps. But then I look at what happened in Atlanta last week. The city got an inch of snow; traffic became snarled for a couple of days and schools had to keep their students in place because it was too dangerous to travel. You see, everything is relative.

With that said, let's go to the naked men who are having a great time playing in the snow (or staying indoors). I'm not about to play in the snow. I'm afraid freezing my weenie.