Whether The Weather

I have no idea what the weather's going to do today.  We're supposed to get snow according to the radio, which has been making dire predictions all morning.  Actually Toronto is supposed to get the heaviest snowfall of the year tonight from a storm that is tracking up from the States.   I think the snow is supposed to stop before it reaches as far north as us.  

I sent my husband to work with a change of clothes today because he works in the northeast of Toronto and traffic can be horrible between here and there if it snows.  So far this season he's only stayed down once, although he's packed a bag several times, because he'd prefer to come home if possible.  I'm not afraid to stay here by myself, I lived alone before we married, and I enjoy being able to sleep spreadeagled and kitty corner every once in a while.   What I really hate is being stuck here in bad weather waiting for him to arrive.

Our roads are clear and pretty well dry again, so we probably will get more snow than predicted.  After that heavy dump we got a few weeks ago, I'd prefer to believe the weatherman than the groundhog.  We've already discussed how accurate I believe men who consult rodents are forecasting the end of winter.

Speaking of weathermen, has anyone else noticed how hysterical they get, these days?  They have computer generated, storm tracking, reporters on the scene, and cell phone photos sent in by viewers, not to mention Doppler radar in the background.  They insist that they're predicting the storm of the century, the worst storm/drought/heatwave in living memory.  They drag in statistics to prove that whatever we're experiencing is proof of global warming, or cooling, or whatever the theory of the day is.  And then, nothing happens.  Despite all the advances in meteorology, quite often the disasters they predict never occur.  Sometimes I think they're disappointed when nothing happens.  Occasionally, I wonder if they just get bored with everyday weather and see if they can get everybody stirred up over nothing.  We have a local weatherman who can find something happy about whatever kind of weather we're expecting.  It's always a wonderful sunny day, or a refreshing rainfall, or great snow for skiing, or a good day to fly a kite.  I guess he's a glass half-full kind of guy.

In any case, there were a few flakes floating down around lunchtime, but nothing to mention.  No matter how accurate the recent predictions are I'm going to go for my walk now and enjoy my latest audio book.  

I'm listening to Alan Bradley's book "I Am Half-Sick of Shadows".  If you have never read any of his earlier books, check them out.  The heroine is Flavia De Lucce, who is 11 years old.  She lives with her father and two nasty older sisters in a broken down English manor house after World War II.  Her father is grieving the death of her mother and she is totally unsupervised with access to an alarmingly well-equipped laboratory.  She loves concocting poisons and solving mysteries.  When her sisters aggravate her, she plots their murder by arsenic or other poison, and imagines their painful deaths (which never happen, of course).  She is a very observant and intelligent child and gets far too involved in local suspicious deaths, to the frustration of the local detective inspector.   This is a series that I really enjoy reading, because it's very well imagined and written.