Hey! The Weather Channel has a new kid in town. Her name is Pole R. Vortex and she is one frosty lady. Now…I don’t know about you, but I live in Indiana. We have a lot of seasonal calamities and I just kind of roll with it. My phrase is, “Oh, it’s just weather.” But Ms. Vortex is getting a lot of attention. I know a bit about polar regions and vortex action is best explained by having kids watch the swirling water go down the drain of a bathtub. Or, it can be substituted with a real tornado. But that homework assignment is unpopular with parents and emergency first responders. Most people don’t know it, but there was a line in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in which Dorothy shouts to Aunty Em: “That is vortex action we don’t usually see here in Kansas!” Umm…the line was deleted because the audience didn’t have Smart Phones to look up the word ‘vortex’. Oh! There is an amusement park in Ohio which has a roller coaster entitled the ‘Vortex’ and has cork-screw-like turns that can scare the bejesus out of ya! I rather like the Vortex, but then, I am fond of most roller coasters. Fun with physics–that is what an amusement park is all about anyway. And as usual, I am off topic.
What is the world coming to? The ‘climate change’ debate rages on while we simple folks have to add ‘polar vortex’ to our word bank. Some days it is more than I can take. My thinking is this: forecasters just need to say stuff like “A helluva cold blast is coming your way” and I will bundle up. The media does not need to conjure up scary meteorologic terminology to make me wear my mittens. The truth be known, I’m still pretty dazzled by wind chill temperatures. When I was a little girl, I just played outside in the snow until I couldn’t feel my face. My little brain was not registering “wind chill of negative twenty degrees” and my parents weren’t racing out to wrap scarves around my face, you know, the face that I could not feel? Nope. They were inside standing on the floor register enjoying the heat, while thinking, “I wonder if Debbie will come in when she realizes her face is frozen. Oh well, let’s enjoy the peace and quiet a little longer.” I was not a coddled youngster. Nor was I very bright.
But I am now. Heck, I now know the meaning of ‘vortex’ and I already knew about the ‘polar’ stuff from writing letters to Santa and reading ‘The Polar Express’ to my kids. I am a bit of a quick study, am I not? NOAA is not going to befuddle me. I am going to have the upper hand. After all, it is just weather, and if it is not one polar vortex, it’s another. I will really start paying attention when the weather folks start broadcasting real phenomenon.
Like the FFI: Frozen Face Index. You wait. It’s coming. And I will be the first to say, “I told you so!” Just as soon as my face thaws out.
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