This photo of our lunar satellite is brought to you by Shitty Photography, LLC… a division of Evil Squirrel’s Nest.
I don’t know if the January full moon is actually called the Cold Moon or not, but it certainly should be. Especially this year…. but I’ll talk more about that in a bit. First off…. full moon! My brand spanking new 2018 calendar I just bought today says it actually falls on the 2nd, but that goes by UTC which we here in the Western Hemisphere laugh at… and I’m pretty sure that moon is full (OK, maybe the upper right corner is a tad flat). I noticed its light beaming off the neighbor’s truck yesterday evening and braved the frigid air to take a couple shots of it. What you see above is the only one of those pictures that came out even reasonably well… and at that, it still only looks good in a thumbnail…
At least I can get a good daytime photo.
I noticed that with how early the full moon is this month that we have a second (blue) full moon at the end of January. That sets up the rare full moonless February that, per the usually reliable 19 year lunar cycle, last happened in 1999. It also means March will have two full moons as well…. so that old phrase “once in a blue moon” doesn’t mean jack shit in 2018.
But the fact that the full moon was unobscured is troubling since clear skies means lots of radiational cooling, and is why it’s expected to get down to about five below zero (F, of course) before sunrise this morning! Brrrrrrrr!!!!
Minus two on New Years morning? What a great start to the year…
Even that 24 in the picture is a mirage since the sun shines directly onto my thermometer’s sensor when it’s at its low winter angle mid morning. It was really in the single digits all day long, and is going to be on the wrong side of zero by the time this post goes live. If you’re in Canada, you can freely laugh… but negative temps are pretty extreme for where I live. We can usually go a couple winters in a row without ever feeling that kind of cold air… and since we definitely didn’t drop this far into the freezer last winter, I guess we were due for the Arctic icebox.
Cold winter mornings usually have very pretty sunrises, though!
It’s the Wolf Moon! And it was the first thing I noticed this morning as I trundled my garbage toter to the curb at 4 am…..
I was reaching for the pearls about you not buying a calendar until today…..until I realized that means that you probably got that bad boy for at least half off price. Rather than the full retail chump price paid for the calendars I got for Christmas (yes, I got calendarS for Christmas and, yes, I was happy to get them).
Which kind of means that I got them for all off price, so never mind….ha!
I guess that’s fitting since I’ve been running with a wolf calendar for the past two years since Mom has finally given up enough on Christmas (much to my approval) that she no longer digs up the squirrel calendar from who knows where she got it from (Probably that kiosk every mall has at Christmastime). Mecca apparently doesn’t like squirrels. They also don’t like losing money, so the calendars get marked down around March or so…. then pulled from the shelves and sent back around Easter time. I’m not kidding. You can give a calendar to your sweetie for VD, and still have to pay full price for it!
Mecca….bleah. I do have a calendar I paid full price for…..at the Dollar Tree.
The DT is my new Mecca. I don’t think I’ve been to the fully leaded Mecca since they opened the Neighbourhood Market. There’s one right by my mom’s house so whenever I take her grocery shopping I pick up my Equate Pepto and whatever other sundries I might need at the same time.
It’s called cold. Really damn cold it’s what mom says. She doesn’t like it. It’s not suppose to be cold in the south… .or at least not in the teens. Make it stop. XOXO – Bacon
Once upon a time, the glaciers came all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico! We might be headed back to the ice age, you never know!
Oh no! Maybe I should start helping Journalist Rocky the Squirrel gather some nuts. You think? XOXO – Bacon
You gonna build a nut dam to stop the glaciers? I don’t know if that will work…
You don’t think so? Dude, I’ve gotta go talk to Rocky the Squirrel and see if he can help. Snorts and rolls with piggy laughter. XOXO – Bacon
I’m so over winter… we were in Kentucky over Christmas and there were a couple of mornings when the windchill was single digits and below -0-!! OMG! Coming back to TX didn’t help! WTF??
The moon was absolutely beautiful last night. May try to get pics of moonrise tonight. We have a blue moon this month also (2 full moons in the same month) and that one is supposed to be a lunar eclipse which will make it appear red/blood moon. A lunar eclipse and blue moon hasn’t happened at the same time in 150 years. So this month is pretty special that way..
Have an awesome New Year Bill and may all your dreams and goals come true! 😚
I usually miss lunar eclipses since I’m at work when they happen. The 31st is a Wednesday, so maybe I can catch this one. I think the last lunar I saw was in 1993…
The 31st of what month is a Wednesday??? Past, present or future?? Ya got me Buffaloed on that one!
And who in their right mind buys Calendars?? I get them free from the Drugstore or Bank! Sheesh! Yankees!!
THIS month. “We have a blue moon THIS month also (2 full moons in the same month)” The 31st of JANUARY is a Wed. 😂😂
January 2018
LOL! Thank you!
I don’t like snow or cold. Here in Cleveland it is pretty gray in winter, almost every day. There’s a little sun today, but don’t let it fool you. It is fricking, freaking cold out there, especially with the wind. I know there are much colder places. I have been to Alaska one August. Brrrrrr Freaking brrrr. For a week long cruise! I don’t want to think of it.
Thanks for the reminders on the different moon activity. My husband Bob and I go outside for this kind of thing. Like the space station going by. I’ll have SO many layers on!
I hear people much father north casually mention that it happens to be about 20 below outside and just shake my head. it makers me feel like someone from the south freaking out over temps in the 20’s when right now that would be a heat wave to me!
Hahaha it’s supposed to be 20° àround 3pm today and I was doing a freaking happy dance! It’s going right back to BRRR TOMORROW.
It’s good to focus on the positive (pretty sunrises) especially when it’s so blinking cold. The Canadians can laugh all they want to, so long as they take back their Arctic cold front!
How high of a border wall would be have to build to keep all that cold air up there permanently? I think much of America would unite on that cause….
That moon really does look cold. Or maybe I’m just cold. I think I’m cold all the time these days. The sunrises are beautiful in the winter. We get some that are so bright and purple and pink, it’s like an extra sun rising in the east.
I always wish I had something to take a picture of the sunrises with when I get off work in December and January (Which is right around sunrise), because there’s a nice, unobstructed view from the parking lot. There isn’t any place near me that isn’t loaded with lots of houses or trees blocking the horizon… so I get a lot of photos like that one where it looks like someone’s house is on fire…
The full moon has been keeping me awake. As for temperature, it was a balmy -11C with a wind chill around-30 when I packed my car. An improvement over the last time I unpacked my car. It was -32C…excluding the windchill. Trade ya’? 😉
Yeah…. no. I know -40 C = -40 F, so that’s pretty darn cold… as in colder than it’s ever gotten here. Please keep that up north, thank you!
Ha, we rarely even get to minus Celsius. Not at all yet this winter!
I’m in the Western hemisphere and UTC is the same as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) because we invented Time, so we don’t laugh at it…
Dammit! We need to make the Prime Meridian zig zag around countries like we do the International Date Line. It confuses my head to think of any place east of the Atlantic as being in the Western hemisphere! At least I took meteorology classes long enough to always be able to remember the conversion for my time zone…. -6 in the winter, -5 during Daylight time.
Yep – it’s cold alright…..and then some. That “dusting of snow” we got a week ago is still out there dusting away with no melting in sight thanks to the ridiculous temps. Another Ice Age? Could be…..after all, I’m sure we’re overdue for one – it HAS been a while since the last one. 🙂
Pam
Thank you for reminding me to get a picture I wanted to take! Two of the houses at the end of my street built snowmen in their yards when our inch or so came down right before Christmas… and those snowmen are STILL there, even though much of the ground is now uncovered, which looks really weird! The yard I can see from my front door isn’t that barren, but the other snowman is literally in a snowless desert!
If we do get another Ice Age, I just hope it brings sabertooth squirrels with it!
Brrrr! It’s hard for me to even imagine that kind of cold. I kind of feel like we’re missing out on the excitement of the big freeze here. Our boring non-winters are so boring! On the other hand, my 30-year-old furnace would surely bite the dust if it had to work that hard, so I’m grateful for the Rockies and Cascades which are protecting us from this particularly frigid air mass. Stay warm!
My furnace wasn’t getting many breaks the whole week I was off. I got tired of hearing come on and off, but given how bundled up I was, it probably wasn’t running enough…