It’s winter in Virginia.
This means I spend hours researching weather forecasts, and none of them actually take place as forecasted.
Personally, I’m convinced that the yutzes who get paid to track weather patterns just make the shit up as they go. Or maybe, because Virginia weather has all the stability of a home-made wormhole, the people tasked with predicting it have just stopped giving a rat’s ass. But one thing I’m sure of, is that they don’t bother even sticking their hand out the window before issuing their proclamations of what might fall out of the sky, or how low, or high, the temperature might be.
For those of us who are required to actually venture out into the mis-forecasted weather this turns daily life into a proverbial game of ‘dodge the lawn dart’. Wearing cute mesh flats? You’ll end up wading through three inches of rain and/or sleet. Prepared with rubber Wellies? Brace yourself for the trek through an East Coast version of Death Valley. Wool sweaters assure that we see record highs for the middle of winter, and daring to go out with only a flannel shell will get you sent to the emergency room for exposure and hypothermia. There is no winning in Virginia in the winter.
Most evenings, I make a minimum of three trips out to the barn. One to put horse blankets on after the balmy afternoon inexplicably slips into a mimicry of subarctic tundra. The second trip is to take the blankets off when, as the sun dips below the horizon, a last flare of daylight catapults us into the tropics of the equator. The third and final trip is to put the blankets back on, and always takes place after dark and amid livid cursing. Usually, Trip 3 is brought on by a specific event. For example, I step onto the porch to set out a bag of trash and suddenly feel my nose hairs freeze solid and I then realize that it’s already below the projected 33 degrees and that we’ve entered an overnight Ice Age.
I don’t have to blanket the horses, but since one of the them is over 30, the other is in his twenties, and the donkey is age-unknown-old, and survivor of abuse, I spoil them. That means giving them blankies when the temps drop into the 20s or lower, especially if the wind is up. Problem is, in good ole Virginia, the temps might be in the 20s, 40s, and 70s all within a five hour span.
The only thing you can be sure of when it comes to Virginia winters, is that you’ll be making multiple trips to the barn, and you’ll never have the appropriate clothing–be it for horses or humans–on to counter whatever kind of weather is actually occurring.
This means I spend hours researching weather forecasts, and none of them actually take place as forecasted.
Personally, I’m convinced that the yutzes who get paid to track weather patterns just make the shit up as they go. Or maybe, because Virginia weather has all the stability of a home-made wormhole, the people tasked with predicting it have just stopped giving a rat’s ass. But one thing I’m sure of, is that they don’t bother even sticking their hand out the window before issuing their proclamations of what might fall out of the sky, or how low, or high, the temperature might be.
For those of us who are required to actually venture out into the mis-forecasted weather this turns daily life into a proverbial game of ‘dodge the lawn dart’. Wearing cute mesh flats? You’ll end up wading through three inches of rain and/or sleet. Prepared with rubber Wellies? Brace yourself for the trek through an East Coast version of Death Valley. Wool sweaters assure that we see record highs for the middle of winter, and daring to go out with only a flannel shell will get you sent to the emergency room for exposure and hypothermia. There is no winning in Virginia in the winter.
Most evenings, I make a minimum of three trips out to the barn. One to put horse blankets on after the balmy afternoon inexplicably slips into a mimicry of subarctic tundra. The second trip is to take the blankets off when, as the sun dips below the horizon, a last flare of daylight catapults us into the tropics of the equator. The third and final trip is to put the blankets back on, and always takes place after dark and amid livid cursing. Usually, Trip 3 is brought on by a specific event. For example, I step onto the porch to set out a bag of trash and suddenly feel my nose hairs freeze solid and I then realize that it’s already below the projected 33 degrees and that we’ve entered an overnight Ice Age.
I don’t have to blanket the horses, but since one of the them is over 30, the other is in his twenties, and the donkey is age-unknown-old, and survivor of abuse, I spoil them. That means giving them blankies when the temps drop into the 20s or lower, especially if the wind is up. Problem is, in good ole Virginia, the temps might be in the 20s, 40s, and 70s all within a five hour span.
The only thing you can be sure of when it comes to Virginia winters, is that you’ll be making multiple trips to the barn, and you’ll never have the appropriate clothing–be it for horses or humans–on to counter whatever kind of weather is actually occurring.
My niece, aka The Kid, loving on Fran(cesca) the rescue donkey while 30+ year old Thoroughbred rescue Saida (Aisha, if you ask my Mother what her name is) looks on and wonders where her hug is.