Salon.com > Snow

In Nebraska: Old friends, “Mad Men” and chatting about divorce

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

I feel I’ve failed you again, dear reader, in that I’m not discovering roadside kitsch or figuring out why red state people like their guns or (sometimes) think Obama wasn’t born here. This weather spooked me, and I’m driving crazy fast when I’m driving.

It was hard to leave my friend Mary’s house Wednesday morning once we heard there was going to be snow all day across Nebraska. Both fireplaces were lit, there was coffee and muffins, Sadie was happy with her pack, the gorgeous Golden Retrievers Max and Malie, and I was headed to Nebraska? Why?

A word about Mary. I met her through Open Salon, she was one of the fantastic originals, and we connected through our writing right away. She came to our crazy Salon party at the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, where Glenn Greenwald and Duncan Black cavorted with Joe Klein (no, they didn’t cavort, although they were all there) and Arianna Huffington came for a minute and left her lovely sister Agape while she departed in a limo for dinner with celebs (which was all good) and Gov. Ed Rendell dropped by and a bunch of Open Salon people came and they were pretty much my favorites. There was Dave Cullen, of course, my writer on the Columbine school shootings, still a year or two away from his award-winning book, and I’m sure there were other people, and then there was Mary.

A much-needed post-Hannity snow day

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:41:00 +0000

As part of my ongoing road trip across the country with my dog, Sadie, I planned to spend two days in Boulder, but wound up with no choice in the matter: We’re socked in with about a foot of snow. I tried to race the storm to Boulder on Monday, but it found me in Evanston, Wyo., when I woke up yesterday morning.

I complained in my last post that it’s been hard to meet people since I’m averse to leaving Sadie alone in a hotel room. But in Evanston I met a drunk welder in a cowboy hat as soon as I checked into my dog-friendly Best Western. “Hey, good lookin’,” he said, and I can state categorically that I was not good looking at that moment: dirty hair, no makeup, boots still salty from our trip to Bonneville Salt Flats.

(Oh, here’s Sadie, before she got salt poisoning.)

Snowmaking is the most dangerous part of skiing

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 13:00:00 +0000

DECEMBER a couple years ago, I am on the back of a snowmobile. The gas fumes are overpowering, and the two-stroke engine too loud to hear anything over. I race up a hill with 30 feet of hoses trailing behind me. These are not some small rubber garden hoses but the size of ones firefighters use. I’m clutching onto someone named Nolan, who’s steering. Dusk is settling; the hill is steep, and I worry we’ll tip over as he rounds a bend. Nolan has a first name but doesn’t use it. He’s thirty with rust-colored hair hidden under a hood and balaclava. He wears insulated everything: Carhartts, gloves and blown-out snowboarding boots patched together with duct tape. He’s head of snowmaking at a small ski hill in the Catskills near where I live, and until this afternoon I have no idea what it takes to make snow, the very work involved.

Climate contradiction: Less snow, more blizzards

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:36:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — With scant snowfall and barren ski slopes in parts of the Midwest and Northeast the past couple of years, some scientists have pointed to global warming as the culprit.

Then when a whopper of a blizzard smacked the Northeast with more than 2 feet of snow in some places earlier this month, some of the same people again blamed global warming.

How can that be? It's been a joke among skeptics, pointing to what seems to be a brazen contradiction.

But the answer lies in atmospheric physics. A warmer atmosphere can hold, and dump, more moisture, snow experts say. And two soon-to-be-published studies demonstrate how there can be more giant blizzards yet less snow overall each year. Projections are that that's likely to continue with man-made global warming.

Consider:

— The United States has been walloped by twice as many of the most extreme snowstorms in the past 50 years than in the previous 60 years, according to an upcoming study on extreme weather by leading federal and university climate scientists. This also fits with a dramatic upward trend in extreme winter precipitation — both rain and snow — in the Northeastern U.S. charted by the National Climatic Data Center.

Northeast trying to get back on track after storm

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:09:00 +0000

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Emergency crews and residents struggled to clear roadways and sidewalks from a storm that rampaged through the Northeast, dumping up to 3 feet of snow and bringing howling winds that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands.

Municipal workers from New York to Boston labored through the night Saturday in snow-bound communities, where some motorists had to be rescued after spending hours stuck in wet, heavy snow. Meanwhile, utilities in some hard-hit New England states predicted that Friday's storm could leave some customers in the dark at least until Monday.

"We've never seen anything like this," said Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone of Long Island, which got more than 2½ feet of snow.

About 400,000 homes and businesses remained without power early Sunday, down from a total of about 650,000. Some school districts announced they'd be closed on Monday, complicating parents' back to work schedules but giving kids another day for frolicking.

At least five deaths in the U.S. were blamed on the snowstorm, including an 11-year-old boy in Boston who was overcome by carbon monoxide as he sat in a running car to keep warm while his father shoveled Saturday morning. That death and the illnesses of several others exposed to carbon monoxide set off a flurry of safety warnings from public officials.

Nemo covers the Northeast

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:37:00 +0000

Nemo "found" the Northeast this weekend. The powerful storm swept across the region, dumping more than three feet of snow in parts of Connecticut and more than two feet on Long Island and Massachusetts.

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Walking in a fecal wonderland

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:37:00 +0000

Winter brings wonderland dreams of pristine, snow-covered landscapes. At the Arizona Snowbowl resort, you can ski on it. You can sip hot chocolate gazing upon it. You can even get married on it.

But you might not want to make snow cones out of it. Because this year at Snowbowl, that twinkling white powder will be made from human sewage.

Three cheers for America’s innovative capitalists, who are leading the world in turning shit into snow. This year, the Arizona ski resort, located near Flagstaff, will become the first ever to charge humans to glide about in their own waste: 100% pure sewage effluent. How’d you like to face-plant in that?

If that’s not horrible enough, the mountain is sacred to Native Americans, who are outraged over its desecration. Navajo Klee Benally has spent years fighting the resort’s expansion. But in February, a federal appeals court ruled in favor the plans, which had been opposed by 13 Native American tribes and environmental groups.