Bitter winter

[justcarol67]

Lee wrote:
>
> Carol,
> 
> Ouch!  I didn't think it could get that cold in Arizona.  Brrr!

Carol responds:

It's highly unusual for Southern Arizona. It hasn't been that cold in Tucson on that date since 1899! But Northern Arizona is another matter. The altitude in Flagstaff, where I grew up, is 7,000 feet, which puts it in another climate zone altogether. Flagstaff is often the cold spot of the nation. The year I turned eighteen, we had seven feet of snow during Christmas vacation! Oddly, the day before the storm that dumped the first three feet was clear and unusually warm (high in the low sixties, which is highly unusual for Flagstaff in December), and I remember turning to my boyfriend and laughing at the weather forecaster predicting a major snowstorm. Boy, was I wrong! There was another clear, warm spell and then another four feet of snow. My brilliant sister, seventeen at the time, climbed up on the roof of the house, jumped into the middle of the yard, and had to "swim" through the snow to get back to the carport and into the house.

Of course, Tucson has never had a storm remotely resembling that, but we've had an occasional white Christmas (we had one in 1986, with lovely large flakes floating down on Christmas Eve and several inches of snow on the ground and banisters Christmas morning). Easter 1999 was also sort of white, with rain turning to wet snow early in the morning, but it didn't last.

This particular cold front is a dry one, but people in some Southern Arizona cities have been without heat and/or water because there wasn't enough pressure to deliver the natural gas or their pipes froze. Lots of schools canceled classes on Friday in places like Sierra Vista, Bisbee, and Douglas. It's supposed to be warmer today (high around sixty though the low this morning was 25--another hard freeze) and get cold again on Monday. Lots of people here don't even own warm coats and don't know how to deal with this kind of weather. (I do own coats--I remember other cold winters though none this cold.)

Carol, who nevertheless is glad that she doesn't have to drive on snow or shovel a sidewalk