Tag: weather

If I’m Butter

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 3 mins

Cube-like Boxing Day, may the sides square to proper corners, may the glues adhere, may the receipts please the clerks and bureaucrats, may fibrous corrugations bear out an enduring physics and corresponding strength. SW Michigan Detroit Metro drizzle comedownance, or “sleet” on one of the free weather apps, and atmosphere holding on at the edge of slippery road surfaces, only of concern because I have to ‘get to’ go out in it to shuttle T. from Livonia to Ypsi around 3 p.m. ET. From here where I sit warmly in the morning, I envision the afternoon route as being traveled slowly-safely, though it is always the other drivers who no matter how much you imagine their skillful attentiveness may careen at any moment like Gen Zers checking phones for notifications, knees on the steering wheel at 4 and 7, low tread tires which also happen to be under-inflated, hydroplaning’s slick thrills, no faults to give in a no-fault state. Ford engineers do not do much for me, but to their credit they do make the default settings easy and automatic. I will drive with my lights on.

As I drive slowly later, over and back, or across and around, according to conditions, I will continue to listen to the audiobook I enjoyed enough to savor intervals of sublimity in West Virginia and Ohio as I drove north on Tuesday. Or I will listen to Fiona Apple’s “Hot Knife,” which I was surprised to learn early in December was my most listened-to track in 2025, probably because it was on a loop that one day when I was at the back of the holler piling the last downed branches upon Stick Henge. When? I think June. Because I was out of signal range, the track wouldn’t advance, so I let it loop for oh I’d guess 90 minutes or so. Long listen the glitch.

As I drive slowly later, and as I listen to whatever, I won’t think about the Detroit Lions’ disappointing 2025 season. Won’t think about how I know I should unpack a collared shirt I brought to wear for a Tuesday evening New Year’s Eve Eve dinner. Won’t think about the clumsily worded email I received from VT’s IT division overnight, 2 a.m. on the 25th, about how my vt.edu email address would be terminated and all associated data storage expunged between one and thirty days from now and to contact 4Help if I need any assistance with getting everything saved, moved over, preserved, etc. Server farm can’t be bothered to wordsmith. I felt relieved, call it a Christmas miracle, that I had done well to predict the impersonal notification, to move everything, to set up forwarding, to delete OneDrive contents, Google Drive contents, to empty trash, to download Canvas materials, to empty my office, to turn in the institutionally issued computer. Everything listed on the autogenerated email, I had already done. Weeks ago. Prescient we are digital time travelers, and I was visiting December 25 in October. Lo and behold it is wondrous how many of tomorrow’s emergency headaches are forestalled by deleting early and often. No biggie if a little bit of memory spills and leaks, but that was always in motion and already assured.

In addition to that overnight work email, one of the gifts I received yesterday from my daughter, Is., was Amphigorey, a super-book collection of fifteen Edward Gorey books into a single volume. Uncomfortably, peculiarly delightful are The Gashlycrumb Tinies, of course, but The Listening Attic in limerick-illustration pairs has also piqued intrigue. They are bawdy, violent, awful in moments, yet they also, therefore, blossom indecorous and rare in today’s media environment, as if certain identifiable genres are endangered, out of fashion, almost gone. And so, a Boxing Day limerick inspired by the Gorey collection.

Boxing Day eff! as rainfreeze blew sidesies
Remote start boo-bloop do your thing please?
Over roads he then drove
GPS Livonia arrove
Whining Pig cringed cried wincing oh-why-me’s.

Helene Says

/ Derek Mueller / 1 Comment
⏳ Approximate reading time: 3 mins
“Tropical Storm” Helene waterblading inland on Friday.

Always understood Wonder Hollow to be a soil course, a place where the mountain’s old and crumbling footings hold loosely: clay, rock, rubble, roots. With enough rain, the ground softens to mud. Add even more rain, the mud pushes back and water surfaces. Multiply by the slopes and angles, and, well, I guess the equation is water makes way and a soil course is just a relatively drier version of a water course. TropSto Helene made its way inland overnight. By now, noontime on Friday, its outspun ribbons are with wind and spray lashing at SW Virginia and lots of other places not especially well landscaped for giving water anyplace to go. The mood here is medium suspenseful; every little while wondering, is this the worst of it?

Rainwater collecting next to Side Shed at Wonder Hollow.

Lost power at home around mid-morning when I was making way to campus for office hours and figuring I could get a few things done here in Blacksburg. Raincoat, overshoes, umbrella. The Appalachian Power notification said the estimated restoration time was Sunday night at 11 p.m., but once I checked the map and saw we were part of a 1000+ outage, the scale gave me hope, and the power was restored within two hours.

Rare rapids at the French drain.

A. took a few photos of the holler-turned-river, the highest water we have seen in these three years. The four pullets had to be moved, as the chicken tractor happened to be parked in the middle yard as the waterway formed. Wisely they’d taken to their coop, which is I guess 30 inches off the ground, so while it was alarming, no lasting harm came of it.

More rainshed, mid-yard.

The one lasting harm of the day, so far, is that Helene toppled the century-plus oak at the back of the holler, near the phone of the wind. It was massive, healthy, a leaning elder and a friend back there, its branches patting me on the shoulder when I mowed, else giving shade to deer who often gathered under it. Can’t come up with much more to say about it, so witness it, sit quiet in that witnessing, rehearsing its wonder so as not to forget it too quickly. In this era of intensifying weather, what?, is AI gonna plant a new one, flex its might and set it vertical again, restore its roothold? Right, quiet, witnessing.

And otherwise safe, if soaked.

Still more rainshed, mid-yard.
On its side, the century-plus oak at the back of the holler. Maker only knows how the see-through catalpa next to it held on.

Mixed Mess

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 min

Mixed Mess, the name Roanoke forecasters have assigned to this Saturday’s maybe precipitation, a could-be-rain-but-might-be-snow guess, also happens to be the name I had assigned, before reading the weather forecast, to the porridge I prepared for the Wonder Hollow Six late this afternoon. Mixed Mess—the chicken treat slurry, not the cusp weather event, but then who can reliably say—includes two eggs, two overripe bananas, a half cup or so of quinoa, cinnamon, crushed eggshell, and equal parts sweet potato skins and carrot peels from a lunchtime ramen bowl. (90) ??❄️???

[WSLS Weather Authority, 2024]

Hail Possible

/ Derek Mueller

⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 min

Figure 1. Office window during a heavy rainstorm.

Shanks 315, a Thursday afternoon, sideways rain crosshatched with 45 degree angled rain crosshatched with vertical rain crosshatched with my own break from letter writing crosshatched with a curiosity about whether this WordPress app I’ve had my my phone since forever will actually Thunder! Lightning!

Brought my umbrella, good thing. Will walk home between 5-6 after the rain has passed, good thing. App works for posting, good thing.

Some Angels

/ Derek Mueller

⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 min

Some Angels

Began with pancakes and sausage, one game of NBA2K14, the first of two drive and walk shovelings, lazy adjustments to FYWP blog CSS, created an article review file and plunked down some impressions, sawed the Christmas tree in half for needling through the snow to curbside, vacuumed and emptied collecting chamber, prepped a lentil soup (tomorrow’s lunch) with football and hockey ambient-ambivalent in the background, shoveled again, dusted off the Element but did not drive it, gave up on snowball fight for poor snowpack, then made up a lousy game of tag on trails before the angels left wing-and-gown prints. Inside fifty pages fire and hot chocolate-side of Gaiman’s Fortunately, the Milk with Is., bummed to see Fitbit count only up to 7,595, 7,596, 7,597, and a blog entry–the first since October, first of 02014, but above all to make sure widemoth still turns over in this time of winter weather.

“Rain” AND “Routes”

/ Derek Mueller

⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

Imagined Geographies

A Wednesday morning. 9 a.m. An hour into the day’s office hours. This is the first rainy day of the semester; high humidity makes for a muggy Equinox Eve. Soon I will pack my things and walk a GPStimated three-quarters of a mile across campus to teach my first class of the day, ENGL326: Research Writing, in which we will develop short lists of Halavaisian engine-searching precepts and then step through the setting up of Google Search Alerts via RSS.

The rain will make today’s walking sloppier–a puddle-dodging trek past the library and the science building. This is a new problem intensified (potentially) by the temporary relocation of our campus offices. On teaching days this semester I walk almost three miles back and forth across campus: Rackham, Hoyt, McKenny, Hoyt, Rackham, Bowen Lot. When the weather makes clear skies and 68F, all of the back and forth is fine. But when it rains. But when it rains.

And then there’s an unexpected umbrella frailty, or umbrailty if you are still in the mood for new words on this gray morning: my finest umbrella, an old and sturdy stand-by since my time in Syracuse, is failing. The handle slips off from time to time, and now it will not close up for stowing. The clasp does not catch. The canopy wants always to be open (a sure sign of its late-life wish for vigor and lasting purpose), and this makes some people think my unkempt umbrella is the cause for today’s showers. I have a second umbrella. Green and free (a gift from REC/IM), it does not withstand winds like the aging gear I just described. For today, at least, it might be enough to keep me dry and out of scorn-shot from the superstitious out there.

First Soccer

/ Derek Mueller

⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 min

Getting Organized

Conditions were unkind cruel Saturday for Is.’s first soccer outing of the spring: 45F, gusting winds, light rain, swampy pitch. For a first-time experience, I would call this one heckuva difficult test–a hard check of their pre-K grit. Just forty-five minutes out there proved some admirable soccer stick-to-it-ness for these kids and their families. They typically run a 30-minute practice followed by a 15-minute game, but Team Green, our “opponent,” wanted to start the match early because their parents and kids were mutinous with complaining about the elements. We got the game underway without much if any practice session. Having served many seasons as Ph.’s coach, I am strictly a parent this time around (yeah, I’ll volunteer to hand out the shirts or distribute snack, but no coaching). Is. is three-almost-four; Ph.’s soccer rounds helped us put youth sports in perspective years ago. And so Saturday was a lot of fun. Is. ended the session with a smile, and she has asked to kick around several times since.

Reflecting on the event, Is. said, “I’m on the blue team.”