Blinding Me with Science

Yep, I am all about science. My screen saver of over ten years is the magnificent Crab Nebula. Imagine my excitement when some of my favorite science bloggers at EarthSky in their post today shared a brief, beautifully realized visualization video of the Crab Nebula. 

As they write: "The visualization was produced by a team at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland; the Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It debuted earlier this month at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii."

Enjoy and be amazed.

Snowmageddon (eyeroll) Season is About to Begin

It's Minnesota. It's November. We are on the verge of our yearly winter wonderland.

I LOLed when I ran into this lovely sarcastic and very funny graphic about regional reactions to snow. It gets at the core of all the silly snowmageddon hype that swirls around the weather as we get to winter.

Growing up in Green Bay and living in Wisconsin most of my life, snow is just a thing you live with.

The happiest people live with it well. For the active-love-to-be outside-happy people, there’re snow angels; skiing; snowshoeing; sledding; tobagganing; skating; hockey; and lots of fine shoveling. For less active happy-hygge-hibernaters, there’re tons of reading; writing; thinking; contemplating; stoked up fires; slipping outside for a moment in sub-zero temps to throw boiling water up in the air so it crystallizes as it falls; driving along "snow-peeping" at white-covered hills, trees and structures; ice falls; nestling in to wait out blizzards.

I guess I've been one of the happy ones. I love the cold crisp, allergy-less and bug-less air; dressing in layers (you can always add layers to stay warm; you can never take enough off in hot weather to get cool); snowshoeing on trails broken by deer; stretching my muscles cross country skiing with the requisite post-workout hot cocoa or tea.

Here's to winter - and to you - wherever you are during the next 4 months. May you find happiness in flakes and cold - or warm temps as the case may be. I just feel lucky to take mine cold!

So. Much.Water.

We live in a community nestled right along the Mississippi River, about a mile below Lock and Dam 7 at Dresbach MN. Our location gives us an up front and center seat to the effects of climate change.

In MN, we are experiencing our wettest year on record. The swollen Mississippi reflects that moisture. Even before last spring's snow melt the river was running unusually high and very fast. The barge shipping season was mightily delayed.

After the predicted flood stage happened in late spring and early summer the river has stayed high.  Trees on wetland near the shore and on islands and land spits have had their roots and lower trunks submerged in water for almost all of the past seven months.

The dam's gates have spent more time open than closed. The flooding has deposited alot of sand that the Army Corps of Engineers don't have enough funding to adequately dredge to keep the 9ft channel free.

We often walk down to the lock and dam to see what is happening. As we do, we reflect on all the rest of Mississippi River communities south of us who have also experienced flooding, breached levees, massive erosion and structural losses. What we are experiencing is nothing compared to them.

This is what climate change looks like at our house.