I was sitting here, thinking, if you can call it that before the third cup of coffee, as the morning sun streamed through the living room windows and exploded inside with blinding splendor, would it be appropriate, after all these weeks, to call the latest weather event involving the catastrophic displacement of the Polar Vortex a cold snap?
It hardly seems appropriate. I've seen cold snaps, and I've worked outside in them, and sat in my truck with the heater running in them, and shivered and cussed atop telephone poles in them, and this was no cold snap. A cold snap, more often than not, comes quickly, with clear, cloudless, sunny skies. They only last a day or two. They are almost invigorating.
This slog of dismal, dreary, bone chilling cold was more like, I don't know, an Arctic plunge. We sank into it with almost deceptive slowness, and we endured it until it was over. We lived through it, might be the best thing you could say about it. And I haven't even seen my gas bill yet.
"Cold snap" makes me think of farming, such as a sudden burst of cold in the spring that threatens something you planted. Short-lived, not fatal to humans. This... thing in the Midwest is an Arctic monstrosity!
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