Bruce Laidlaw read yesterday’s post, which featured a careful selection of Sunny Winter Day images from earlier in the month. Then he looked outside his window at the thrashing Bay, and replied: Thanks for the new post. Things looked so nice. You couldn’t take those photos today. It’s blowing 35 [mph] here and it has been about that high all day. I can’t remember sustained winds that high. I went to the beach to try to capture the action, but wind is hard to photograph. And I had to wear protective glasses to keep my eyes from stinging.
Not pretty, eh? Mama Nature on a tear. Click on it for a bigger version if you like scaring yourself.
I know exactly what Bruce meant. I wrote yesterday’s post at the kitchen table over at Babs and Betty Jo’s, surrounded by windows. The only way to escape the vision of swirling snow would be to sit under the table, and even then I would hear the wind, booming. What the heck. I stayed where I was. Torch Lake was just a turquoise glow under the pale, whirling gray. It went on that way all afternoon.
When I got home last evening I could hear the Bay roaring. That’s a siren sound for me – I like to go see what it looks like when it’s in that mood. Yesterday . . . I trotted right up the stairs and into the house, locking the front door behind me. We are cozy inside, and dreaming of spring, with Dutchmen’s Breeches flapping on Mama Nature’s clothesline.
Meanwhile, Mr. Tootlepedal has been out looking at snowdrops. I recommend you go along for the ride. It will cheer you up.
Torch Lake Views 
P.j. grath
February 20, 2013
AMEN! Bruce doesn’t mention FREEZING FINGERS while trying to capture the wind with his camera. We are not planning to go ANYWHERE today.
(I usually try to resist those full caps that look like screaming, but I had to raise my voice to make myself heard over the WIND!)
Gerry
February 20, 2013
ME NEITHER! (Or should it be “ME TOO”?) Bruce has a howling wind video that we might be able to post where we can see it whenever we’re broadband-accessible. So to speak.
uphilldowndale
February 20, 2013
Well, you guys just stay tucked up out of the storms. Great to hear from you, we were just thinking of launching an international search and rescue party!!
Gerry
February 20, 2013
Feel free to send along one of those nice big furry St. Bernards with the cunning little cask. We can all tuck up together.
Martha
February 20, 2013
I prefer not to look at green and growing things when it’s so cold and wintery. I prefer to find ways to appreciate the misery I am staring at rather than look at what I can’t have for at least 2 more months. I long for too many things. I’m trying to cut back…
Gerry
February 20, 2013
I often find it easier to appreciate deep snow when I’m looking back at it from the vantage point of sweltering July or August. Unless there’s sun on the snow. I am fond of sunnyy snow days. I put my snowshoes and ski-poles in the car in order to be ready for the next one we get.
Karma
February 20, 2013
One might think one was looking at the ocean in that whipped-up picture!
I have an idea for P.J.’s freezing fingers: I have flip top mittens! There are individual finger sections underneath and then you can flip back the top of the mittens to expose fingers.
Gerry
February 20, 2013
Perhaps I should mention to the Bay that we would, on the whole, prefer lakely behavior. Although I suppose that could get boring . . .
I tried flip top mittens, but my hands are too short. I keep thinking I should make my own. Hm, a double layer, stuffed with Cowboy fleece . . .
tootlepedal
February 20, 2013
I’m glad you liked the snowdrops. I am going to have to stop moaning about our weather I see.
Gerry
February 20, 2013
I longed for those snowdrops. But feel free to moan away. No one will take offense. We won’t be able to hear the moaning over the roar of the tempest and the clamor of our own cursing.
Sybil
February 20, 2013
Bet you wish you were with Flat-Kathy, enjoying sunny South Africa.
Gerry
February 20, 2013
South Africa is an intriguing place, but in spite of everything there’s no place I would rather be right now than right here in Michigan.
Gail
February 21, 2013
The roaring wind is throwing ice pellets at us while the midnight storm shoots lightening bolts through the snow clouds here in the Ozarks. Ma Nature is having a winter party and it’s an amazing sight. Wish I had those gloves here. Next time you give Cowboy a good combing, send the fleece our way?
Gerry
February 21, 2013
Whoa! Thundersnow! We don’t get that very often, but it’s always awe-inspiring when we do.
I half suspect that the fleecy clouds flying eastward are made of Cowboy fleece . . . and that’s just what he sheds.
shoreacres
February 21, 2013
My solution to the freezing-finger problem is rock-climbing gloves, such as those sold by Patagonia. I need something that leaves fingertips exposed (for fingertip control of sandpaper, of course), and those do it. They’re made of a wonderful, cozy fleece that is somehow warmer than any fleece I’ve found, and the palms are made of something like the cover on a soccer ball, for durability and flexibility as you’re climbing that rock face. Or sanding, or taking a photo.
Thirty-five sustained is nasty beyond words. It’s also what passes around here as the appetizer when a hurricane’s on the menu. Those winds push so much water that some of the evacuation routes can be flooded before you know it – that’s why our version of the old Chicago maxim is “evacuate early and often”.
I still can’t get over how Great your Great Lake is.
Gerry
February 21, 2013
Now that you mention it, I wonder what ice-climbers wear? Must investigate. As for me, I’ve decided that the ideal solution is to insert the camera into a specially designed muff that would wrap my fingers in warmth. Until I have worked out the manufacturing challenges I will defer photography when the temperature falls below 20 or the winter wind rises above 10 mph.
Lake Michigan is an impressive body of water, and yet it is not the largest of the Great Lakes. I love it. It does not love me back, which is an interesting thing to think about if a person has an odd turn of mind. Which brings me to Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics for Ol’ Man River and Paul Robeson’s versions and off I go on another day with my Civil War veterans and their descendants. Water’s always moving, and yet it’s always there, one way or another, in these great lakes and rivers. And the past isn’t even past.
shoreacres
February 21, 2013
Anyone who can so smoothly ease the good Mr. Faulkner into a discussion deserves admiration.
I happened to be reading some Larry McMurtry while waiting at the eye doctor on Monday, and found this passage: “[Flannery O’Connor] kept an eye on Faulkner, of course, remarking once that no one would want their old hack parked on the tracks when the Dixie Limited came whistling through.”
Gerry
February 21, 2013
Only a Texas poet could braid in Flannery O’Connor and Larry McMurtry.
Some readers will wonder what we’re on about; others are nodding their heads wisely and murmuring “It’s February, after all.”
Giiid
March 2, 2013
I had been worried about your absence for some time, and was ready to join Mrs. UHDH´s search and rescue plans, when I found out that you had returned, and posted 4 times in less than a week. That´s what I call a return. Welcome back it´s good to read you again. (If there is a secret energy-recipe, please share it.)
Gerry
March 3, 2013
Ah – the secret energy recipe is to “post ’em while you can” – and then lollygag around for another week or so. I guess the coming week see another flurry of activity.