Monday, December 13, 2010

The Arctic Touch

It's really, really cold out there. Don't believe me? Go open your door. Here we have have temperatures that are struggling to break into the 20s with wind gusts that are cracking on in the upper 40 mph range. I don't think that I really appreciated just how hard the wind was blowing until I went to the post office a few minutes ago.

I like post offices. They're the last buildings around here that were really built to show power. The two bigger ones around here are so large, so high-ceilinged that every little think you do in there echoes. Sometimes I think putting a stamp on an envelope echoes. But they're built to impress you with the authority and power of the United States Government and on the inside, particularly the older ones where I live, they pull it off.

After purchasing my book of Christmas evergreen stamps I went over to the table to affix them to the envelopes of the last bit of our Christmas cards to get into the mail. As I was working the envelopes, the wind started to howl. And I mean howl. Not just that little moan you sometimes hear in the winter. I mean a full on, screaming banshee wail that was enough to make you look up and take notice. The windows rattled and the doors of the post office actually creaked inward under the force of the wind.

That was the first thing that made me notice the ferocity of the wind. The second was the moment that I opened the door to step back onto the street and was hit with a blast of wind that made it hard to breath for a couple of seconds.

We didn't see hardly any precipitation off of the big storm that crashed through the area over the weekend, but we're sure feeling the arctic touch at the moment.

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