FINALLY…

…Hell has frozen over.  Hell, of course, being located in Phoenix, AZ, and frozen, this time, is not metaphorical at all.  

When you live in the Sonoran Desert, you tend to take an “I’ll believe it when I see it” attitude toward the weather.  Even someone like me, a self-proclaimed weather nerd, doesn’t have a lot of faith in weather forecasting, unless the 6-o’clock news says “Sunny and Hot.”  This one, unfortunately, is nearly never wrong between the months of May and October.

For days now, I’ve been hearing of temperatures in the 40’s forecasted for today.  In February?  In Phoenix??  I’ll believe it when I see it…  See, I told you!  Alas, the forecasters were FINALLY right - we actually saw it today.  I woke up this morning at about 4:30, put on my robe and stepped onto my patio to smoke (for all ye of little faith, I have yet to smoke in my house some 19 months after I bought it and moved in.  So there ;P).  I was met with a wind that may as well have been throwing a thousand knives at me, howling through my neighbor’s pine tree.  Shiver, shiver…and I pull up the Weather Channel app on my phone.  32 degrees…feels like 22!!   High temperature for the day?  Forecasted at 47.  Whoa, serious stuff.

Fast-forward about two-and-a-half hours later, and I’m walking into my building at work.  The wind is blowing so hard, I can’t even open the door.  Eventually the wind caused such a problem opening the doors that security stood there to open them every time someone felt the whim to walk through them.  Fast-forward yet another hour-and-a-half, and I’m standing outside yet again.  I’m wearing a sweater, a jacket, and gloves, and yet I’m shivering uncontrollably.  No. Way.  

It went on like this all day.  The talk of the town today, in social media and on the news, was the plethora of frozen fountains dotting the city.  I’ve lived in Phoenix for 32 years and I have never seen an icicle here…until today:

 Photo courtesy of Marybeth Gardner

 Photo courtesy of Kara Lonati

 

At the end of it all, 44 degrees was recorded as the official high temperature, breaking a record that has stood since the early 1900’s.  The official temperature is recorded at the airport, only a few scant miles from where I work.  Where I live, though, it never topped 41.

Global warming?  You sure about that??

Some may say that this is nothing compared to what those in the Midwest survived today.  I would agree.  The difference is that those who live in the Midwest are used to it.  Those of us who live where it’s 115 in the shade in July, not so much.  Maybe remembering this day in the middle of July will knock that scorcher down a few degrees :)