Teapots on the way…
A breaking news weather language event.
A Winter Storm Warning has just been issued for our area. What on earth is a Winter Storm Warning? I have never in all my recorded here years of weather obsessing ever seen one.
It’s a first for weather related language.
Or are Environment Canada just trying to keep things varied?
Does a Winter Storm include showers of teapots or salt shakers or locusts perhaps? It’s question for the penguins.
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I’ve enjoyed the readers who’ve landed up here with the “what is an arctic outflow warning?” search terms. Am hoping the what is a winter storm? searchers will also turn up. And the Penguins fans.
You’re all welcome at mrsokana. We’re full of Malarky here.
Just went for a little field trip in the -5 (which feels like minus 9) arctic outflow warning and it wasn’t too bad.
But I was wearing ski-ing clothes in anticipation of the arctic encounter and my mind was full of warm thoughts about penguins and their supreme intellect.
There’s a bit of a wind out there alright.
This is a major cold weather event for us. Even tho’ by Edmonton standards it’s tropical.
I still have no potato masher in my life. Each Tuesday comes and with it a hot pan of potatoes to mash and no masher. I have managed to cultivate two topics of key interest that do no elicit the same level of excitement in others my age: gymnastics and penguins. I begin to comprehend train spotters and people who collect those John Deere tractors.
I give you this. They’re so clever: go limp, rather than fight, then out of the jaws they bolt….
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6wYy-YBkE0&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Penguins do not sleep ever. They nap. There’s a piece in the latest NYRB about a book The Great Penguin Rescue that describes a penguin rescue from an oil spill in South Africa. In one paragraph the aquarist, Dyan diNapoli who wrote the book describes arriving and seeing all the penguins ripped from their mates and shoved into random pens in an enormous warehouse, “serving as an improvised penguin rescue centre.” I think there were 16,000 penguins. My first thought on reading this description concerned the napping arrangement. If there are 16,000 of you in pens and none of you sleep — how can you possible negotiate napping? We struggle to reach consensus on two couches.
I shall read and report.
I am completely down with the penguins. Keep it Penguin.
Huddling
I had been so looking forward to an outing to watch Shadow Machine at W2, but my stomach had other plans and misbehaved.
Earlier today I was reading more on kleptotherming and the Admiral penguins huddling procedures and wonder how this might be adaptable to a short legged, frozen woman in a supposedly temperate climate. Penguins have a nifty “wings out” approach where they lift their wings out as a deflection against the cold. They puff their feathers to trap air. I think the common armpit may mimic this action and shall experiment. They also have bald patches that are less impressive. They have excellent blood flow control to their feet.