Life's a Coast

February 13 2010. A "just for the record" clip on a crystal clear evening. We experienced a brutally cold day here today, although very sunny, the temps hovered in the mid 50's and the strong breeze made the "feels like" temp nearer to the 40's. Many old timers claim that this has been the coldest, cloudiest, breeziest winter here that they can recall, adding that it follows the hottest and WEIRDEST spring, summer, and fall that they have ever seen...

Ok, this is Tuesday, and the temps today were quite chilly with a breif high in the low 60's, so we are still in the throes of a recent cold front that moved into the area that has not yet had time to move out and we have yet another cold(er) front moving in tonight to drop the temps into the low 40's again, a repeat of Sunday, which was a repeat of Friday, and so on backwards for how long we can't remember. Global cooling? No, just a cold winter from a stronger than normal El Nino (caused by warmer than ever water temps in the equatorial Pacific), which proves out with the typical extra cold and "moisture" in the midwestern, southern, and eastern U.S., and warmer temps and less moisture along the western seaboard of the U.S. (standard with El Ninos), all of which has been evident from the "Snowmageddon" news stories in the midwest, south, and east along with the reports from the northwest where the Winter Olympics are seeing higher than normal temps with the trees blooming already and melting snow such that they are trucking in tons of the white stuff. Take that dose of reality you climate change deniers, and stop hypocritically ho-ho-hoing about what is simply the normal effects of a strong El Nino phenomenon coupled with blocked Atlantic highs which are caused by cooler water temperatures from the ice melt of the ice sheets and glaciers in nearby Greenland and Iceland due to the documented global rise in temperatures. Remember that we had above normal summer-like historic record heat last year as recently as December, just before the January El Nino "Deep Freeze" set in...

The customary warm sunshine that we were blessed with for the last several cold days was noticeably absent today, mostly cloudy all day long, with only occasional teasing bursts of brightness that hinted that the sun was up there somewhere. High temp was somewhere aroud the mid 60's, but at least the air was still, no sign of a breeze, so there was no wind chill dragging down the "feels like". Still, blading or biking of course did invoke a bit of a chill, so not much exercise today either, had to settle for long walks on the beach and mostly staying inside and working on our other blogs and websites, kind of like a snow day up north. Looking forward to weekend, supposed to get back up to near normal temps, just in time for the "in-landers" to invade our beach...

Yet another weather front moves in from the Gulf of Medicola, yet another cloudy overcast sunset, but we did have a few hours of nice warm sunshine today, temps up into the mid 70's early but dropped a little at mid day, making it a little cool. Still crowds of inlanders and tourists flooded the beach today enjoying what to them was no doubt idyllic weather.

February 22 2010. At sunset this evening we have a dark gray overcast sky, winds from 25 to 30 knots, with a threat of pelting rain. Nothing video-genic, and not real nice weather to get out into, so we have passed on going over to the intracoastal boardwalk to even see what is going on. Just plain crazy abnormal weather here this winter. The entire day today was pretty icky, no sunshine, windy, off and on rain, cooler than is pleasant to get out in without the unpleasant chore of "bundling up".

We enjoyed a very spring like day today, up into the 80's, humidity into the 90's, clouds and sun, lots of showers, thunder, strong winds, with two severe storm warnings over the course of the day. We even had flocks of noisily chirping migrating birds that would forage in the grass during calm spells. However, we are warned that our spring like weather is coming to an abrupt end tonight with yet another cold front meandering down out of the frozen northland, dropping temps again for several days...

We missed the actual sunset due to getting caught at an intracoastal drawbridge on our way to the observation tower at a nearby nature center. So, we caught this video from a bridge looking south over the south end of West Lake, with the Hollywood Beach barrier island to the left and the mangrove swamp to the right. Twas a beautiful day today, bright and clear with a warm sun, but the air was a little nippy. Supposed to be like that for the next couple of days, one last cold spell, we hope that's the last anyway, time for some warm weather.