I noticed that Iowa City and Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas have a couple of things in common regarding the celebration of the Martin Luther King holiday this week—one is inclement weather. The other thing is hope for peace and unity.
I was a student at Huston-Tillotson (one of the HBCUs) back in the 1970s. I saw it snow there once. It turns out that one of the MLK events will be postponed to January 27, 2024, and that’s the Austin MLK March. It’ll be too cold, with a chance for freezing rain. The event is billed as the MLK CommUnity March. The MLK Festival and Food Drive has been rescheduled to January 27th as well, and that will be at Huston-Tillotson University. The emphasis is on unity.
In Iowa City, the MLK Peace March on January 15, 2024 will instead be a vehicular parade because of the really cold weather we’ve been having recently. The emphasis is on peace. The parade will start at 9:30 AM.
All of my life I’ve admired Dr. Martin Luther King for his efforts to unite everyone in peace. Despite the world’s current events, I still have hope that the effort will continue.
We all have a lot in common, and it’s not just the weather.
The CDC on January 12, 2024 reported that respiratory virus activity is elevated or increasing across the country. The summary:
“Summary
Seasonal influenza and COVID-19 activity remain elevated in most parts of the country; however, the rapid increases seen over the past several weeks appear to be slowing. The U.S. continues to experience elevated RSV activity, particularly among young children. Hospital bed occupancy for all patients, including within intensive care units, remains stable nationally. However, some jurisdictions are reporting strain on hospitals locally, driven, in part, by recent increases in respiratory illness.
Influenza
Multiple indicators of influenza activity including test positivity, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations are elevated. Additional information about the recent increases in influenza activity can be found at: Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report | CDC.
COVID-19
Despite test positivity (percentage of tests conducted that were positive), emergency department visits, and hospitalizations remaining elevated nationally, the rates have stabilized, or in some instances decreased, after multiple weeks of continual increase. Emergency department visits for COVID-19 are highest among infants and older adults but are also elevated for young children. Despite the high levels of infection measured using wastewater viral activity and test positivity data, at this time, COVID-19 infections are causing severe disease less frequently than earlier in the pandemic.
RSV
RSV activity remains elevated nationally in all regions, though decreases have been observed in some areas. Hospitalization rates remain elevated in young children and continue to increase among older adults.
It’s going to get colder in Iowa with wind chill factors raising the risk for cold weather-related illness. Read CDC guidelines about how to recognize and prevent hypothermia and frostbite.
January is National Soup Month and Sena made a smoked turkey soup in honor of the occasion. This is the counterbalance to the winter storm and blizzard warnings this month.
This morning we shoveled—and shoveled—and shoveled. It was the Sisyphean labor all over again, only this time with Winter Storm Gerri.
And then we went back out in the afternoon into the arctic dimension and shoveled some more. We could have just stayed out there until the blizzard warning took effect. As it was, we were out for an hour and a half, about to quit—and the city plow roared by and scraped a wall of snow boulders plug in our driveway. We had to stay out for an extra half hour. Thank you.
Anyway, during our morning break from shoveling, we got “near genius” level on a quiz about soups. Our answers were lucky guesses. How about a couple of turkey jokes?
Q: What’s the most musical part of a turkey? A: The drumstick.
Q: Why did the turkey refuse dessert? A: He was stuffed.
Soup wins! We were not so stuffed we couldn’t have cherry cobbler for dessert.
I just got the update on what I think is Winter Storm Gerri. The National Weather Service has now upgraded this catastrophe in our area to a Blizzard Warning.
Iowa is getting a one, two punch from winter storms Finn and Gerri. We hardly got a break from Finn’s left hook before Gerri’s right cross connected.
This morning we scraped off less than an inch of new snow that fell last night. We might get from 8-12 inches of new snow. Wind gusts could be up to 50 mph with dangerous wind chills over the next several days. The party gets started late tonight.
If you want to drive anywhere, I suggest a Big Wheel race around your living room.
Winter Storm Finn was a very blustery thing. Sena got a video of our backyard, though, which presents the calm after the storm. The heavy snow makes all the trees bow, as if in homage to nature, whatever its form.
That said, we’re hoping Winter Storm Gerri tones it down a little.
Okay, we got about 14 inches of snow from Winter Storm Finn, but that doesn’t begin to convey the human meaning of it.
I’m going to call digging out from all that snow a Sisyphean labor. You don’t hear that term much, but it means a chore that never seems to end while you’re doing it. The short story about Sisyphus comes from Greek mythology.
Sisyphus was the king of Corinth. Just to be clear, it generally doesn’t snow in Corinth. One day, King Sisyphus saw a splendid, mighty eagle carrying a beautiful maiden to a nearby island (where it also does not snow). A river god named Asopus told him that his daughter had been abducted, but not by extraterrestrials. Sisyphus suspected Zeus, who had never seen a snow shovel, if you can imagine that. Like a fool, Sisyphus asked Zeus to help him find her. Because Zeus hated nosy mortals who aren’t supposed to know what the boss god is up to, he banished Sisyphus to Hades where he had to roll a giant rock uphill which always rolled back downhill (Hamilton, Edith. 1942. Mythology. New York: Little Brown and Company).
Anybody who knows what it’s like to try to shovel walks and driveways during a horizontal snowstorm knows that for every shovelful of snow you remove, twice that amount refills the space you empty almost immediately. You’d have to stay out in the snowstorm forever to keep up. It’s the definition of a Sisyphean labor.
And that’s why Sena and I left about a third of our driveway uncleared last night because we were exhausted. We’d been out in that storm shoveling all day since early morning. We ached everywhere and didn’t have much to show for it.
This morning we were up early again, anticipating trying to clear the driveway and again shovel all the walks, the curb ramp, the trees and whatnot.
The driveway had been cleared, probably sometime during the night, by a good Samaritan we’ll probably never know for sure. We could tell by the telltale friction wheel tracks, and the perfectly circular mark of the machine’s turning radius. A path to our curbside mailbox had also been cleared.
We are grateful. The only big job left was to clear the curb ramp, across which was a hip high mountain range of snow left by the city plow. It was also blocked by a large pickup truck. The driver must have seen us and he hurried over from where he was working with a crew building a house. He was more than happy to move it—although I was not so happy when I found out how hard we had to work to clear the curb ramp. If you start from the top, the snow spreads out over the mountain. If you start from the bottom, the snow from the top falls down. I would call that Sisyphean labor.
Anyway, we’re waiting for the next disaster, which I think the meteorologists are calling Winter Storm Gerri. They’re promising 4 inches of new snow by Friday. It almost sounds like light duty.
Iowa City has web pages for the rules on snow removal by the city plows and by residents.
You can see the pdf of the map for residential street priorities for snow removal.
Shoveling snow or using a heavy snow blower can be hazardous to your health. There is guidance from the National Safety Council about how to remove snow. On the other hand, there are definite rules about clearing snow from your sidewalk.
There are no rules against juggling snowballs that I know of.
The National Weather Service has a Winter Storm Watch out for several counties in Iowa, starting Monday evening, January 8, 2024 through Wednesday evening. There’s a possibility of 8-13 inches of snow and blustery winds.
The CDC has a healhcare provider toolkit available to prepare their patients for the 2023 for the fall and winter virus season. It’s up to date and comprehensive.
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