I can hear a painful wind rattling and bumping against the siding. The frigid blast that follows a snowstorm will entertain, enlighten and envelop us for the next few days at least.

At my location the high today is expected to be 4. I shouldn’t complain. Already it’s 1, so the external warmth will quadruple! Sunshine helps. The breeze hurts, literally. I will spend at least part of today using a shovel to lift frozen chunks of snow, and then finding a way to hurl them in a direction that is NOT into the wind.

I’ll spend the rest of the day trying NOT to slide into a roadside ditch.

The eastern wind, by the way, blows snow into our crawl space of an attic. Something in the design of the vents, which are configured to keep snow out. yields to that persuasive eastern gale. As a result, a wet spot appeared on the ceiling of one of the interior rooms, so I was crawling through insulation last night, scooping snow and wet cellulose fiber into buckets. Not an ideal Saturday night diversion.

This is what extreme weather brings – a sense of urgency. Whatever you had planned for the moment is not as important as the fact that nature, the ultimate hacker, is launching an assault on the systems that keep you alive. The grandiose view of the situation is that “nature is trying to kill me”, but in fact nature doesn’t care either way. Humbling? That’s the point.

How will you face the elements today?

Thanks for the robust conversation yesterday. Obviously a snow day is good for at least one indoor activity – reading and posting comments on blogs!

Barbara in Robbinsdale sent this picture yesterday. It combines two recent themes – ladders and snow. (A terribly dangerous combination, Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty would say.) It took this recent sequence of posts to open tim’s eyes to how rich he is in ladderage. Yesterday he reported owning two 8 foot ladders, a 16 footer, two 24 footers, a 36, and a 46. That’s 138 feet of ladders, or 46 yards, stretching about halfway down a football field, if you laid them end-to-end. But it would be crazy to do that. They’d be covered up with snow, and the football players would trip over them.

I found myself wishing I had put up Christmas lights and taken down birdbaths and the sundial while I watched the flakes swirl. The Twin Cities forecast includes temperatures above freezing every day for the next week, so there will be melting and a second chance to bring stuff inside.

What treasures did you leave under the snow?

So here it is, the first measurable amount of snow in the Twin Cities this season. Other areas around Minnesota are also getting some accumulation. Those who live outside the major storm track may have to make do with freezing rain this time around. Don’t worry. It’s only mid-November. Your storm is coming.

So it goes as our planet spins around the sun, changing it’s angles and plunging us into that uncomfortable place where, for at least 5 minutes and in some cases all day or all season, people cannot remember how to travel safely. If I could have 100 dollars for every fender bender in Minneapolis and St. Paul this weekend, I could open my own auto body shop. But it still wouldn’t be worth it. Let the finger pointing begin!

A major benefit of the first significant snow this year is that it arrives on the weekend. For those with Monday-Friday jobs and food in the cupboard, it means they can look out the window with smug satisfaction, thinking – there’s absolutely nothing to be gained by going out there. By taking most of the comfortable outdoor options off the table, nature invites the non-hardy among us to engage with the environment close at hand. Namely, all the inside tasks and pleasures we ignored while taking advantage of an unusually mild October and early November.

That game is up. For the cold-shy, the useable world just got smaller.

I plan to do some dusting and filing. Yipee!

How will the weather effect your weekend?

Enjoy the end of September, Babooners.

Northern Minnesota will see the peak of fall color over the next few days. The DNR has a nifty website that can keep you up to date on the progress of autumnal glory.

Southern Minnesota will spend the weekend bailing out from last Thursday’s record setting rain. If I had a radio station to play with, I would offer at least two high water songs to inspire the bucket brigade. Were there an officially sanctioned flood music genre, these would be its classics.

Randy Newman playing Louisiana 1927 in Germany.

Johnny Cash doing Five Feet High and Rising in Los Angeles in 1959.

Two famous songs about real floods sung by their authors. Our recent deluge probably isn’t extensive enough to add a tune to the flood song cascade, unless someone comes up with an irresistible, watery rhyme for “Owatonna“.

Have you ever had to do battle with floodwaters?