Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

BTE is the guy who tells heart patients they have it soft compared to the cancer ward.

 

Yakutsk is a good reminder that we live on a planet with a 180-degree swing in habitability.

 

BTE, I am curious: why the mosquito problem? That was said to be hellacious during the building of St Petersburg.

 

Because Siberia has so many large lakes and rivers and marshes, mosquitoes thrive in these taiga landscapes.

Yakutsk is built on permafrost. When it melts somewhat in the spring, you get a lot of marshes and standing water.

 

That’s just a summer day in the Mississippi Delta - but with smaller skeeters.

 

I believe Alaska has a similar problem in its interior.

 

Yes. I thought that Michigan’s U.P. had bad mosquitoes each summer (and it does), but then I went to Alaska and Denali NP in July.

 

Just got through a decent sized blizzard here.
6 inches of snow. Winds over 60. Just delightful.
Most people here can’t drive when it’s 80 and sunny.

 

We had crazy wind all day yesterday, and it may be worse right now than it was then.
Not at my house but elsewhere in the county, they clocked a couple of gusts at 112 mph. One of the elementary schools had - past tense - an aluminum awning over it's sidewalk, and now that think looks like wadded up piece of paper.

 

Winter don't give a shit, just like honey bear.