Weather WTF

[katmai]

Yep 42 and raining here at moment.

[katmai]

Yep 42 and raining here at moment.

In Fairbanks for work where currently -19f/-28c Brrrr

[Eddie Teach]

One day Fairbanks residents will pretend their city was named for Douglas Fairbanks, as befits the Hollywood of the North.

[CountDeMoney]

Wonkblog
Washington Post
The American love of lawsuits is forcing cities to ban sledding, ruin winter

Cities, evidently, must have a sledding policy, which never occurred to me until I read this curious Associated Press story about the trend of sledding injuries, sledding lawsuits, and subsequent municipal sledding bans:

    No one tracks how many cities have banned or limited sledding, but the list grows every year. One of the latest is in Dubuque, Iowa, where the City Council is moving ahead with a plan to ban sledding in all but two of its 50 parks....

    In meetings leading up to the ban, Dubuque council members lamented the move but said it was the only responsible choice given liability concerns and demands from the city's insurance carrier. They pointed to judgments in sledding lawsuits in the past decade, such as a $2 million judgment against Omaha, Nebraska, after a 5-year-old girl was paralyzed when she hit a tree and a $2.75 million payment when a man in Sioux City, Iowa, slid into a sign and injured his spinal cord.

The AP cites bans or restrictions in communities in Iowa, New Jersey, Nebraska and Indiana, as well as one town in Illinois that went so far in 2013 as to remove a 20-foot junk mound where families had taken to having fun. Omaha tried a test ban, only to conclude that people would ignore it anyway. It's understandable that cities here fear lawsuits but unfortunate that they have to. The injuries mentioned above are terrible and sad, but they're also incredibly rare (the Omaha suit largely turned on a dispute over how much blame to apportion in the accident, between the city and the parents.)

How pervasive is the actual problem? Research says that about 20,000 people 19 or younger are treated for sledding-related injuries in emergency rooms each year (boys more than girls, 10-to-14-year-olds more than other ages). Only about 4 percent of those cases require hospitalization. No data, though, on how many of them involve litigious people who want to spoil sledding for the rest of us.

[Syt]

We didn't get many sledding winters when I was a kid, but our favorite hill was in a small forest (we pretended we were riding speeder bikes on Endor ), and the end was the curve in a path around a frozen pond, with the goal to make it onto the pond with as big a jump as possible.

[Admiral Yi]

This is why white people can't have nice things. 

[The Brain]

America fuck no!

[katmai]

-29f/-33c today
Take that PDH!

[PDH]

-29f/-33c today
Take that PDH!

It was 35 here today!

Now it is mud everywhere...

[Ed Anger]

A snow panic is underway in Ohio. Stores are empty of milk and bread.

[Caliga]

A snow panic is underway in Ohio. Stores are empty of milk and bread.

No snow forecast for here.  Of course, I have to be in Chicago most of the rest of this week.  YAY, I love below zero temperatures!

[HVC]

It's fucking cold.

[KRonn]

Temps in the teens here in Mass this morning/overnight, or around -10 Celsius. Going to be even colder, around zero degrees F later in the week but a bit "warmer" during the day.

Edit: I was out at lunchtime and it was still in the upper teens. So not even a warmup into the mid 20s today. Some snow flurries.

[CountDeMoney]

SNOW DAY!!!

I love snow days.  That way, I don't have to feel guilty about being unemployed for the day, and just take the off from my full-time gig of anxiety and penniless despair.  And take the Jeep out to an empty field for a bit.

[Caliga]

GAAAAAAAAAAAH!   Fucking Chicago!